“Throw a penny, mass’r! Throw a penny, please!” they shouted.
“What is it? What are they doing?” demanded the girls.
“Watch!” answered Mr. Wales, and taking a big copper coin from his pocket he threw it toward the men. Before it hit the surface of the water all three were after it. One caught it as it fell, but another knocked it out of his hand, and then all three dived for it. The girls crowded to the side of the boat to watch proceedings, and sure enough, though the boatman said the water was twenty feet deep, it was so clear that they could see distinctly when one of the men, feeling along the bottom, reached the coin and, sputtering and coughing, came up to the surface with it. Instead of going back to his boat to rest, he calmly put the coin in his mouth, and paddled lazily about, joining in the shouts of his companions for more pennies.
The girls began searching for small change, and Roberta, who wanted to take a picture of the divers, was recklessly holding out a quarter, when Mr. Wales discovered her predicament and gave her an English half-penny instead.
“I brought a stock of them along,” he explained, “for I thought the divers would amuse you girls.”
But the men had seen the glint of Roberta’s quarter, and they swam close up to the launch, crying, “Throw us siller for ’sperience, lady,” until Roberta gave it to them after all, declaring that she had more than her money’s worth of fun out of watching their frantic efforts to capture the big prize.
The men followed the boat till it reached the wharf, and immediately the picturesque sights on shore engrossed the girls’ attention. “Look at that,” cried Betty, pointing to a funny little gray donkey harnessed to a dilapidated dump-cart on which was perched a tall, lank negro boy. His clothes were very ragged, and the harness looked as if it might have been mended with the loose bits of them. Odds and ends of string and strips of parti-colored cloth entirely covered up the leather, if there had ever been any.
“Oh, do you suppose he would stand for his picture?” asked Eleanor, who, like Roberta, was a camera fiend.
“He certainly will, if you give him a half-penny for doing it,” said Mr. Wales, producing his last copper.
“See that horse!” cried Bob, as a diminutive pony, harnessed much like the donkey, dashed madly down the street and deliberately ran full tilt into a lamp-post.