“Oh, such a time, Jerry! The canoe tipped over, and spilled Dorothy into the river, and I don’t know how I ever got her out. And then we couldn’t get away, and I screamed till I was hoarse, but nobody came. Oh, Jerry! I’m so glad!”
Jerry’s answer seemed a trifle irrelevant. But he said the things he was certain could not be postponed another instant.
“Look here! I’m going back to school. I’ve been a coward, just like you said, but now I’m going to start out same as David did, and stick to it like that other fellow–I forget his name–and say! I’m–I’m sorry.” He was out of breath when he finished, as if he had been straining every muscle to raise the weight, crushing, overwhelming, that had been lifted from his heart.
They picked up Dorothy without awaking her, and Jerry pulled hard for the bank. “We’ll go straight up through the woods. There’s a house not quarter of a mile back. Prob’ly they’ll all be up and around. You see, the men were going to start early this morning, so’s to–so’s to–” Jerry floundered, his pale face suddenly flushing scarlet, and Peggy understood.
“Oh, Jerry!” Her voice dropped to a shocked whisper. “Oh, Jerry, they thought we were drowned.” Then she uttered a little pained cry. “And at home, too? Do they know?”
“Joe’s going to telegraph first thing this morning.”
“He mustn’t,” Peggy cried fiercely. “I can’t bear it. I won’t bear it to have mother hurt so.” Unconsciously her arm tightened about Dorothy, till the child roused with a little cry.
Jerry looked at the sun. “I guess we’ll be in time to stop him,” he reassured her. “Don’t you fret.” And then, as the boat bumped against the bank, “Here, I’ll take the baby.”
Jerry’s conjecture proved correct. There was a light in the kitchen of the farmhouse, where the farmer’s wife was preparing breakfast for the men hurrying through their morning tasks to be ready for the sombre duties awaiting them. At the sight of Jerry, with Dorothy in his arms, Peggy dragging wearily behind, the men guessed the truth, and the trio was welcomed with such shouts that Dorothy woke up in earnest. As for Peggy, she could hardly keep back the tears at the rejoicing of these total strangers over the safety of Dorothy and herself.
Jerry had thought this problem out in the toilsome climb from the river. “Say, I want the fastest horse you’ve got. They’re going to telegraph this morning to her folks and I’ve got to stop ’em.”