The next minute she knew.
The splashing cries which came from the feathered edges of the bathing-pool rushed toward her like a great water-wave tipped with foreign foam, about which there was nothing articulate until, presently, the spray of one clear shriek was tossed up: “’Becca! Rebecca!”
The Morning-Glory’s face was a very white flower now, all crumpled by fear, as was the flattened parcel she hugged, the parcel that was to have worked a metamorphosis.
“’Becca she—she go down, stay down, under de water. She haf eat de green apple—she sick—she down under de water—she not come up—eugh!” So the spray-like shriek spread itself out into a cloud of words as a little French girl of six or seven in a bathing-suit came flying, wild-eyed, toward the one tall figure she saw, the girl with shiny blue glass buttons on her blouse, who frantically hugged a small parcel.
“Where? Where? Show me where!” The figure dropped the parcel with a scream and seized the hand of the newsbearer. “Show me where!”
Down into the feathery ripples—the tiny ripples that broke so gently upon their earthy rim as if protesting that their shallow innocence couldn’t do any harm—they went together, barelegged child and skirted girl who didn’t even wait to toss off a shoe.
“’Becca she canno’ speak—no’ cry, like me—jus’ ketch her ‘tummy’ an’ fall—no’ come up!” The raving child vivaciously illustrated her meaning by pounding with a wet left fist upon her own little rounded stomach, rather full of unripe apples, too.
“Where? Where?” was all the girl could say. “Drowning! She must be drowning in two or three feet of water—lying on the bottom of the bathing-pool!” raged her thought, storming like a thunderclap in her ears.
The sheet-like pool was wide and wan, covering half an acre, no depth of color anywhere, except where the brilliant afternoon sun created an island sunburst in the water around the fountain and where near the pool’s edge it showed topsy-turvy, moving pictures, pink and yellow, of children standing or promenading on their heads, as if in fear.
Jessica’s agonized promenade was short and splashing. Now the water rose above her knees as she dragged herself and her clothing through it! “Where? Where?” was still all her seemingly water-logged tongue could say.