“He’ll pull me under! Oh, he’ll pull me under!” she suddenly cried out, as she felt a big twitch on her hook. “Come help me, somebody! He’ll pull me down into the hole!”
Uncle Billy put his hands over Janet’s, and together they brought up a royal fighting pickerel.
All the other children, still flourishing round on their skates, swarmed up then to see the big creature Janet had caught, and to beg for hooks and lines themselves. And in a moment—oh, horror! what was this? Essie had skated straight into the hole Charlie had cut. There was a wild cry from Essie, as she plunged, a wilder one from all the others.
But on the instant Uncle Billy had flung himself across the hole, and with both arms down in the still cold water had caught hold of her. Then crawling away, with Charlie’s help he lifted her to the top and out upon the ice, quite conscious, but terribly scared, and as wet as any seal.
Accidents never come alone, says an old proverb; and it was not to be expected that Ally should not have her share in any dangers going.
Before Essie, shivering in every atom of her, had fairly been set upon her feet, another shriek rang upon the air.
“I’m all afire! Uncle Billy, I’m afire!”
And there was Ally wrapped in a blaze, that made every one, for a single heartbeat, stone still with terror!
For in moving quickly on her skates away from the hole where Uncle Billy was drawing poor little Essie out of the water, Ally had backed straight into the fire, which caught her skirts instantly; and no one knows what might have happened if Charlie had not rushed and thrown her down, and tossed his coat over her, and rolled and pressed and stamped out the flame, although not till it had scorched his good hands and burned poor Ally’s little legs. Perhaps he was not very much helped by Essie’s running and precipitating herself and all her wetness on them both.
“Well,” said Uncle Billy, “here’s a chapter of accidents!” And Essie, wet and freezing, and Ally with her two blistered legs and burned and ragged woolens, were huddled in the greatcoats and mounted one on each shoulder, and Uncle Billy ran with them as if he wore seven-league boots.