“SOMEONE HAD CAUGHT THE FALLING GIRL.”
Dorothy at Oak Knowe.
“Gwendolyn, I tell you now, in the presence of God and these witnesses, it has been your precious privilege to save a human life, by your swift thought and determined action you have saved the life of Dorothy Calvert, and God bless you for it.”
“Then we are quits!”
For another moment after she had said those words she still rested quietly where she was, then slowly rose and looked about her.
Dorothy had been in the greater peril of the two, yet more unconscious of it. She had not seen how high above the ground she hung, nor how directly beneath was the lake with the thinly frozen spots whence the thicker ice had been cut for the ice-houses; nor how there were heaped up rocks bordering the water, left as nature had designed to beautify the scene.
She was the quickest to recover her great fright and she was wholly unhurt. Her really greater wonder was that poor Miss Muriel should happen to faint away just then.
“I’m glad she did, though, if it won’t make her ill, ’cause then she didn’t see me dangling, like I must have, and get scared for that. Likely she stayed out doors too long. She isn’t very strong and it’s mighty cold, I think.”
So they hurried her indoors, Gwendolyn with her, yet neither of them allowed to discuss the affair until they were both warmly dressed in ordinary clothes and set down to a cute little lunch table, “all for your two selves,” Nora explained: “And to eat all these warm things and drink hot coffee—as much of it as you like. It was Miss Muriel herself who said that!”