“Cricket!” he exclaimed, with his heart in his mouth.
“I guess I’m all right, papa,” came a scared little voice from the heap, “but I don’t know, ’xactly, where I am.”
Her father lifted her up, and felt of her arms and legs.
“No bones broken. Is your back all right? and your head? In the name of common-sense, child, what are you doing around the house, all dressed, at midnight?”
“Why, it’s morning,” said Eunice and Hilda together, who, with the others, had gathered at the foot of the stairs, everybody asking questions and talking at once.
“It’s morning, and it’s the Fourth of July,” explained Eunice, “and we got up, and Cricket was going to wake the boys, and get a rise out of them. Is Cricket hurt?”
The doctor was still feeling Cricket’s back, and her mamma was rubbing her hands anxiously, but they all laughed at Eunice’s explanation.
“Morning, dear child? It’s just ten minutes of twelve,” she answered, looking at the tall hall clock. “Just midnight.”
“Midnight!” cried all the three girls, incredulously. “We saw the sun rising, anyway,” said Hilda, bewildered.
“The moon, you mean,” said the doctor, laughing.