I got up, feeling giddy and strange, and the aching at the back of my head was almost unbearable; but I began to walk with Day holding my hand, and after a time—he guiding me, for I felt very stupid—I began to trot; and at last, with my head throbbing and whirring, I found myself standing by my clothes, and my companions helped me to dress.
“You went out too far,” Day said. “I told you not, you know.”
I was shivering with cold and terribly uncomfortable with putting on my things over my wet chilled body. It had been a hard task too, especially with my socks, but I hardly spoke till we were walking home, and when I did it was during the time I was smoothing my wet hair with a pocket comb lent me by one of the boys.
“How was it I went too far?” I said at last, dolefully.
“I don’t know,” said Day. “I shouldn’t have known anything if that chap Shock hadn’t come shouting to us; and when we came, thinking he was going to steal our clothes, he brought us and showed us where he had dragged you out on to the bank. It was him we saw swimming when we first went in.”
“Where is he now?” I said wearily. “Let’s ask him all about it.”
“I don’t know,” replied Day. “He ran off to dress himself, I suppose, and he didn’t come back. But I say, you’re better now.”
“Oh yes!” I said, “I’m better now;” and by degrees the walk in the warm afternoon sunshine seemed to make me feel more myself; beside which I was dry when I got back home, but very low-spirited and dull.
I did not say anything, for my mother was lying down, and Mrs Beeton never invited my confidence; beside which I felt rather conscience-stricken, and after having my solitary tea I went to the window, feeling warmer, and less disposed to shiver.
And as I sat there about seven o’clock on that warm summer evening it almost seemed as if my afternoon’s experience had been a dream, and that Shock had not swum out and saved me from drowning, for there he was under one of the pear-trees, with a switch and a piece of clay, throwing pellets at our house, one of which came right in at the open window close by my cheek, and struck against Mrs Beeton’s cheffonier door.