When this did not work, the children stared at each other wistfully.
"Do you s'pose you'll have to stay there always?" said Helen, at last, in a half whisper.
"No. I'll holler," said Zaidee, with confidence, "and somebody will come. If only I could get boosted a little bit! Helen!" with a sudden inspiration, "you jump over here and I'll stand on your knee as I do on 'Liza's when she boosts me up into the apple-tree. Then I could climb right over."
Helen hesitated. This plan did not strike her favourably.
"Oh, Zaidee! I don't want to get down there into that white water. It smells so loud, and I'd get my feet all wet, and my dress wet, too." Helen was one of the children whom dirt distresses, and no soil ever seemed to cling to her clothes or hands. Zaidee was not in the least particular, or, perhaps, she would not have lunched on woolly worms.
"But I've got to get out, Helen," she persisted. "I'm all sticky inside. I don't like it. Please jump in and boost me out;" for the problem of getting Helen out never occurred to either of these young philosophers.
Helen looked very unwilling, but she was too used to doing as Zaidee ordered to object further; she slowly put one leg over the edge of the tank till her foot touched the whey. Then she shivered, and hesitated. Zaidee took hold of her leg for fear she would draw it back, but, pulling it a little harder than she intended, Helen immediately fell over on to Zaidee, who, unable to keep her footing on the smooth tin bottom, took a second plunge, dragging Helen with her.
Then two curded and wheyey heads arose.
"Oh, Helen, you look so funny!" said Zaidee, as Helen spluttered in her turn. "Doesn't it feel awful nasty? And see how funny these little stones look now!"
The curd being pretty thoroughly churned up now, with the gyrations of the two children, it was settling in a smooth, even layer over the top of the whey. Zaidee slapped and splashed it about in high glee, perfectly satisfied to stay in the tank any length of time, now that she had Helen beside her there.