The excitement and alarm wrought upon her feelings, and she screamed aloud—
"Children! children! Where are the children?"
Perhaps it was the best thing she could have done. Anyhow, it had a good effect. Lights quickly appeared at the windows, and she heard shrill, childish voices sounding over the water.
"Mansy! Mansy! is that you? Oh! we are glad you have come! Where does all the water come from?"
"Are you all safe?" she screamed.
"Yes, yes; but we have scarcely anything to eat."
"I have something in these parcels!" she shouted. "Oh, thank God the children are all safe!"
"How are you to get here, Mansy?"
That was the difficulty; and Mansy, as she looked at the dull, sullen water, felt she could not answer the question. First she thought of boldly plunging in and wading up to the house door. But, strong-nerved as she was, she shrank from this, and after carefully plumbing the depth a little way with the bulging umbrella, she shrank from it still more. It might be too dangerous.
In the dim twilight of that cloudy summer evening she stood on the water's brink and watched the flood go swaying past. She felt stupefied and bewildered. Whence came the flood, and how? A more unexpected thing had never happened to her. And now she knew that the children were safe, the unexpectedness of it, the amazement of the whole thing, seemed almost to benumb her senses.