“Thanks to you, young woman,” answered Harry Pelham, who was older than the rest. “If you will waste our time falling into brooks—”
“Well,” said Cricket, “I always did fall into the water, and I ’xpect I always will. I remember sitting down in a pail of hot water once, when I was just a teenty little bit of a thing. My! how it hurt! I just cried and cried. At least the water wasn’t so very hot, for the cook was only scrubbing the floor. I had run away down to the kitchen. But the pail was deep, and I was so little, that I doubled together just like a jack-knife, and the cook laughed so that she could hardly pull me out.”
The children laughed, too. Harum-scarum Cricket always had accidents that never would happen to any one else.
“And you were nearly drowned last summer,” said Edna. “Don’t you remember up at Lake Clear?”
“I never heard about that. What was it?” asked Edith.
“Oh, nothing,” returned Cricket, who never looked upon her adventures as interesting. “Edna and I went out paddling in a boat. We couldn’t find but one oar. Edna could paddle, but I didn’t know how, but it looked so easy that I thought I could do it. So I stood up and took hold of the oar, and I took one paddle all right and then I put the oar over the other side, and somehow, I went right over myself. There wasn’t anybody in sight, but we hollered, at least Edna did, and I did when I came up; then I went down again and when I came up I struck the boat. It was pretty hard getting in, and I had to climb up over the end. We had lost the oar, so Edna pulled up the board in the bottom of the boat and she paddled us ashore. And that’s all, and I wasn’t drowned,” concluded Cricket, in the most matter-of-fact way.
“Whew!” whistled Harry. “That was a close call.”
“It was fortunate I hit the boat when I came up,” assented Cricket, placidly, “for Edna didn’t have any oar, and it was hard pulling up the board to paddle with. I ’xpect I might have been drowned, if I’d floated off, and had had to wait for her.”
They had been trudging on through the woods while they were talking, and now they came to where the cart-path forked.
“Which way do we go?” asked Eunice.