"Who is he?" asked Rose. "Is he your father?"
"It's my stepfather, and mother had such work to get the rent from him. And now we'll be turned out all the same, and he'll be that mad he won't know what he's doing. And it'll just break mother's heart, an' finish her off altogether, so it will! O dear, O dear, O dear! whatever will I do?"
The children looked at her in silence for a little while, then Rosie asked, "Have you lost the rent?"
"Yes, down there," she answered, raising her head. "I was jumpin' over the stones goin' across to the little house to pay it, an' I'd got the two sovereigns in my hand when my foot slipped, and they flew out before ever I knew they were gone at all. Just in the very middle, where the water's runnin' fast, and it swept them clean away."
"I'll tell you what!" exclaimed Murtagh, who had been thinking deeply, "we'll take her up to the island and hide her there; then afterwards we'll manage."
"Yes! yes!" cried Winnie; "that's the plan. How stupid of me not to think of that! Let's go up at once for fear he might come and catch her here. No one'll be able to touch you there," she added, turning to Theresa; "it's beautifully hidden, you'll see. And we can take you up provisions every day, and keep you as long as ever we like. Oh, Murtagh, what a splendid idea!"
"Spiffing!" exclaimed Bobbo. "Come along; let us be moving up. We've got a jolly lot of fish here," he explained to Theresa, "and we'll all have dinner together."
The children were so charmed with the notion that Theresa could not help being cheered. She still demurred, wondering what would become of her sick mother; but the children overbore her objections, and in a few minutes they were all going up the river's bank together.
After a time the immediate bank of the river became impassable. Theresa and Ellie then struck across the woods together. The others returned to the bed of the river. Bobbo suddenly caught sight of another trout; the interest in the day's amusement was renewed; and so by the time they all met together again at Long Island not one of the whole party gave a thought to anything but the fun of being on a desert island, and of getting their own dinner.