"Jumbo is very handsome when he is dry," Drusie said, inclined at first to be a little offended. But his laughter was infectious, and Jumbo did after all look so very much like a drowned rat that she could not help laughing too.
"I say, what a jolly lot of rabbits you have got!" the boy said, looking down at the other five, who were busy nibbling away at the grass, without seeming to care in the least what happened to Jumbo; "but aren't you afraid of their running away?"
"They generally behave beautifully," Drusie said, who, because the other three were rather shy, was obliged to do all the talking herself; "but something must have startled Jumbo when we were at the top of the hill, for he set off at a tremendous scamper, and tumbled in headforemost before we knew what was happening to him."
"Poor old Jumbo!" said the boy, as he looked across at the shivering, melancholy rabbit. "We must rescue him though, and that is easily done."
As he spoke he led the way along the bank to a spot where a thick clump of willows grew; and moored to one of these trees was a small, light canoe.
"I'll paddle across in less than no time," he said, "and if the swans do not interfere, I'll soon bring him safely back to you."
The swans did not interfere, however, and Jumbo a minute or two later was clasped in Drusie's arms. She almost cried over him in her joy at his safety.
Sitting down on the bank she began to dry him with her handkerchief; but it was soaked through at once, and the boy suggested that they should rub him with their hands. So Drusie placed him tenderly on the grass, and they rubbed him until their arms ached; and no doubt Jumbo ached too, for they all rubbed with a will.
"But at any rate," Drusie said in a tone of satisfaction, "he won't catch cold now, and he is so old that he might have had a dreadful attack of rheumatism."
Long before Jumbo was dry they had all become very friendly with their new acquaintance. Jim and Helen and Tommy forgot to be shy, and they all chatted away together as if they had known each other for quite a long time. It was not until half an hour later, as, with Jumbo lying comfortably in Drusie's arms, for she said he was too weak to walk, they were all hurrying home, that they remembered they did not even know what their new friend's name was, or where he lived.