Peggy came crashing through the bushes, startled by the summons, and yet scarcely prepared for the sight which met her eyes. And then so rapidly did things happen, that there seemed to be no time to be frightened. For, at the first glimpse of her rescuer, foolish little Dorothy sprang to her feet. As a matter of course the canoe overturned, throwing her into the water.
Peggy’s instinctive leap took no account of the depth of the stream. She could have drowned with Dorothy. It was quite impossible for her to stand by and look on while Dorothy drowned. Luckily the water, though deep at this point, was not over her head. She floundered to her feet choking and blowing, and clutched desperately at a small, damp object the current was sweeping past her. Instantly two arms went about her neck in a frantic embrace.
“Dorothy, don’t hold so tight. I can’t breathe.”
The appeal was useless. Dorothy was beyond heeding any admonition but that of the blind instinct of self-preservation. Peggy would not have believed that there was such strength in the slender little arms. Gasping, and with reeling senses, she edged step by step nearer the shore, groping with her disengaged hand for the sloping bit of beach where she could deposit her burden. When at length her fingers came in contact with the pebbly edge the bright summer world was a black mist before her unseeing eyes.
Luckily the contact with mother earth suggested to Dorothy that here was something more stable than the swaying support to which she had been clinging so desperately. Her hold relaxed, and a minute later she was scrambling up the slope into the grass and bushes, caring for nothing except to get as far as possible from the terrible water. Peggy caught her breath, waited an instant for brain and vision to clear, and then, with the aid of the obliging willow, climbed dripping from the stream. For a minute or two she gave herself up to the luxury of being frightened. Shuddering and sick, she gazed over her shoulder at the rippling water, while one monotonous thought repeated itself over and over in her brain like a chant. “She might have been drowned. I might have been drowned. We might both have been drowned.” Peggy was conscious of an overwhelming, panic-stricken longing for her mother.
Dorothy was sitting back in the bushes, crying with a lustiness which suggested that no serious consequences were to be apprehended from her plunge bath, beyond the possibility of taking cold. “I don’t like ’sploring islands,” she sobbed. “Let’s go back, Aunt Peggy.”
Peggy turned sharply. Down the stream floated the overturned canoe, already at a distance which made its recapture hopeless. A little in advance was a white straw hat, a pert bow acting as a sail. Not till that moment had it occurred to Peggy that her troubles were not yet over. Her gratitude for her escape from death was tempered by irritated dismay.
“Why, Dorothy, we can’t go back! We’ve got to wait till they come for us. How provoking!”
Nothing was to be gained by fretting, however, and luckily other matters were soon absorbing Peggy’s attention. She wrung the water from Dorothy’s drenched hair and clothing, and set her in the sun to dry, a forlorn little figure of a mermaid. And then she performed a like service for herself, stopping at intervals to lift her voice in a ringing “Hal-loo!”
“Oh, dear! We’re going to be so late getting home,” scolded Peggy. “It’ll be dark, and none of us know the roads very well.” She looked longingly at the point around which at any moment a canoe might appear. “It’s going to take some time to land us,” she reflected, “as long as these canoes can’t carry any more than two. Oh, dear, Dorothy! How much trouble you’ve made.” And the pensive mermaid wept again, with the submissive penitence which disarms censure.