It sounded very indistinct and dreamy. Somehow it seemed to have something to do with my first attempt to swim, and I thought I was being pulled out of the water, which kept splashing about and making my face and hair wet.
I knew I was safe, but my forehead hurt me just as if it had been scratched by the thorns on one of the hedges close to the water-side. My head ached too, and I was drowsy. I wanted to go to sleep, but people kept talking, and the water splashed so about my face and trickled back with a musical noise into the river, I thought, but really into a basin.
For all at once I was wide awake again, looking at the geraniums in the window, as I lay on my back upon the sofa.
I did not understand it for a few minutes; for though my eyes were wide open, the aching and giddiness in my head troubled me so, that though I wanted to speak I did not know what to say.
Then, as I turned my eyes from the geraniums in the window and they rested on the grey hair and florid face of Old Brownsmith, who was busily bathing my forehead with a sponge and water, the scene in the yard came back like a flash, and I caught the hand that held the sponge.
“Has it hurt the baskets of flowers?” I cried excitedly.
“Never mind the baskets of flowers,” said Old Brownsmith warmly; “has it hurt you?”
“I don’t know; not much,” I said quickly. “But won’t it be a great deal of trouble and expense?”
He smiled, and patted my shoulder.
“Never mind that,” he said good-humouredly. “All people who keep horses and carts, and blundering obstinate fellows for servants, have accidents to contend against. There!—never mind, I say, so long as you have no bones broken; and I don’t think you have. Here, stretch out your arms.”