They had been resting for half an hour, under a tree, with their backs to the brook. Now, as they approached it, they were amazed to see how much their work had deepened the water. Instead of a narrow trickle that they could easily jump over, it had widened to a deep pool just above the stones.
“Oh-h!” squealed the children, in delight. Cricket plunged forward to plug up a tiny little hole in their dam. Of course she stopped on an insecure stone, and of course, in attempting to get her balance, she stumbled forward, and stepped into the water up to her knees.
“There; I knew Cricket would do that,” said Hilda, calmly.
Cricket scrambled out.
“My feet are wet,” she remarked, with much surprise. Both the other girls shouted with laughter.
“Did you think the water wasn’t wet?” asked Hilda.
Going home for dry stockings and shoes never occurred to Cricket. It would have been altogether too much trouble. She pulled off her soaked shoes and stockings, and spread them on a sunny stone to dry, and danced around in her little bare feet.
But the stones hurt her tender skin, and the hot sand blistered it. So she sat down on the bank, further up, and dabbled her feet in the clear, running water. The others immediately desired to follow suit, when Cricket “set the Psalm,” as their old nurse used to say, and in a few minutes six little bare feet were paddling about.
“It’s very strange,” said Cricket, at last, after a brief fit of silence, “that Eunice never falls in the water, nor tears her clothes, nor anything. I b’lieve my mother’d just think herself in luck if she had two like you, ’stead of me. I’m the most misfortunate girl always.”
Eunice was a careful little girl, and not nearly so much of a romp as Cricket was. She seldom did have the accidents that so constantly befel her heedless little sister.