It was a warm, pleasant, sunny day when Ted and Jan went down to the brook to play that pieces of boards were their "ships." Then Trouble had joined them, and, just after the mail carrier left the strange letter from Uncle Toby, Trouble had, as usual, gotten into trouble.
Janet and Teddy were not quite certain who Uncle Toby might be. They had heard of him, once or twice, as a distant relative of their father or their mother, but they had not seen him in a number of years. They only dimly remembered him as an old man who lived in a city about fifty miles from Cresco, but they had not visited him in some time.
Just now the plight of Trouble so filled the minds of Ted and Jan that they had no thought for Uncle Toby or his strange letter. Nor did Mrs. Martin give any heed to the missive she had dropped.
"Be careful, Teddy!" she called, as she saw her older son splashing his way through the water. "Don't fall!"
"I—I won't, Mother! Not if—if I—I can help——"
But just as Teddy got that far he stumbled on a round stone in the brook, and down he went with a splash!
"Oh, he'll be drowned!" screamed Janet, who was following her mother along the bank of the brook, while Trouble was out in the middle in his leaking, packing-box ship that Skyrocket had pulled to the stream for him. The dog, who had found the stick which Teddy threw, had rushed back, and was now barking as loudly as he could.
But the water was not deep enough to drown Teddy. It, however, made him very wet. Up he rose, dripping all over, and gasping for breath.
Mrs. Martin paused only long enough to look back and see that Teddy was all right, and then hurried along, trying to pull toward her, with the long stick, the floating box and her little son.
"Det me out! Det me out! I is all wet—I is!" cried Trouble. "My hoots is all wet!" Sometimes the letter "f" bothered him, and he put an "h" in its place, as saying "hoots" for "foots." Of course neither word was right, but who minded a thing like that when poor Trouble was in such a plight?