After a time she went out to call it home, when, to her horror, she saw her baby’s sunbonnet caught on a low, overhanging branch, with nothing else to be seen; and then knowing the baby must have fallen in, she had rushed, screaming for help, down the bank in search of it.
Little Elspeth, wrapped in blankets, was carried to the doctor’s house to be cared for further, and the next day she was playing about, as round and rosy as ever.
CHAPTER XI.
IN THE GARRET.
The garret of the old stone house was a mine of wealth to the children. It was a huge place, extending over the whole house. It had many unexpected angles and sudden little descents of two or three steps in different places, over the rambling additions.
Four generations of Wards had lived at Kayuna, and so there was a most delightful accumulation in the garret. Of course there were lines of old trunks, piled with ancient dresses and quaint bonnets dating from the beginning of the century. There were stacks of old furniture in various stages of going to pieces. There were piles of musty books, in strange-smelling leather bindings. There were big bundles of closely-tied up feather-beds, like huge, soft cannon-balls. These made magnificent barricades when the children played that they were bombarding forts.
It was as hot as mustard up there in the summer-time, of course, but the children never minded the heat. Then there were the long, rainy days that came occasionally, when it was a simple delight to scamper up there directly after breakfast, to hear the rain pelting cheerfully on the roof, and the wind whistling through the window-casings, “like a boy with his hands in his pockets,” Cricket said.
The whole troop had been there one day. It had rained early in the morning, and though it cleared up before eleven, the children played on until they had quite exhausted their resources.
They had sailed across the ocean in search of America, in a huge old sofa turned upside down. They had been shipwrecked, owing to a sudden parting of the back and sides of their bark, and then they were chased by cannibals, represented by Hilda and Edith Craig and an imaginary host.
Little Kenneth, the usual victim on these occasions, had been caught and prepared for a feast, till rescued by Cricket and Hilda in a valiant charge.
They had played the Chariot Race in Ben-Hur, with Zaidee and Helen as horses, harnessed to an old wheel-chair, with Edith as charioteer, while Cricket drove a dashing pair, consisting of Eunice and Sylvie Craig. Hilda and Kenneth were occupants of the amphitheatre, and cheered on the contestants, as they raced around the great chimney in the centre of the house.