“I didn’t mean to hurt ze tittens,” he sobbed. “Would it have hurted ’em wivvout we poted ’em, Tritet?”
“I guess not,” said Cricket, comforting her pet. “P’rhaps it didn’t hurt them so very much this time, only remember, you must never do it again.”
“No, me won’t ever pote ’em aden,” promised Kenneth.
Then, this part of the afternoon’s programme being over, the children ran away further along the stream to play, while Cricket and Eunice sat down on the bank, skipping stones. Baby Craig slept peacefully in his carriage, and the nurses gossiped and crocheted together.
Presently the girls went a little distance down the bank, and crossed on the stepping-stones. Lovely cardinal flowers grew in abundance further up, and they picked big bunches of them. Faintly, from some distance up the stream, came the children’s voices, but they were out of sight of the older ones, on account of the overhanging bushes that bordered the stream above them, on both sides. An hour of the sultry afternoon slipped by. The girls still sat idly by the brookside, for it was far too hot for the least exertion. At last, Eliza, who was not usually so careless, suddenly bethought herself of her neglected charges.
“Miss Eunice,” she called across the stream, coming up opposite to where the girls sat, “have you seen the children?”
“They went up the brook, I think, ’Liza, and I have not thought of them since. I hope nothing has happened to them,” said Eunice, anxiously.
“Oh, I guess not,” returned Eliza, but she set off rapidly up the stream. Some distance beyond there was a tiny cottage, where there lived a poor widow, a young Scotchwoman, with several little children. Eliza had sometimes taken the twins there, and it occurred to her that they might have wandered there now by themselves.
But in another minute the little ones came in sight, running in great excitement.
“Elspeth falled in the water,” shrieked Helen, while still far off. Elspeth was the Scotchwoman’s two-year-old baby. “We sawed her fall in.”