From the wharf below came the sound of laughter. How those ladies were laughing and shouting! He could not see them because of the trees, but the talk and laughter was incessant.
He threw himself down behind a wild rosebush. They would probably sail away soon and then he could go down after his clothes. Pretty lucky to have got away from that cross merchant! Eric had always said he was an awfully cross man.
A long time Johnny lay there and all the while the sound of talk and laughter floated up to him, so he knew that the picnic party must still be on the wharf. The wind began to blow harder; it blew colder, too, horridly cold in fact, and he felt almost frozen. Shivering and with his teeth chattering, he crept back a little way toward the wharf and gazed down from behind a tree trunk.
Just think! There they sat, in the sunshine on the wharf, eating from their baskets and having such a good time; and here was he, alone, naked, and so frightfully cold. Boo-hoo-hoo! He wanted to go home to Mother. He might crawl home through the gutters—but what would Mother say if he went home without any clothes? Boo-hoo-hoo!
“What’s the matter? What ye cryin’ fer?” It was Nils the fisherman who spoke and whose coming over the soft grass Johnny had not noticed.
“Land’s sakes! Layin’ here naked, boy?”
Then Johnny Blossom cried in earnest.
“Yes”—sob, sob—“my clothes are down on the wharf and the ladies are sitting there eating and laughing and—boo-hoo-hoo!”
“Hev ye ben doin’ suthin’ bad? Dassn’t ye go git yer things?”
“I tumbled into the water”—sob—“and we took the boat-hook from ‘Sea Mew’—and then the people came and I ran”—