But the Light remained, the Presence, so near as it seemed to Pem at the moment–even as she had felt it before upon a mountain-top, or at some matchless moment of beauty–that she almost lisped confusedly: “Daddy in Heaven!” as once, a two-year-old, she had prattled it at her father’s knee.
Then what–what? Another voice prattling near her–chattering icily! A bully human voice!
“Gosh! Something r-rotten in the State of Denmark,” it gasped. “Jove! I like excitement, but I’d rather be warm enough to enjoy it. Oh! Dad, if there are any others left in that car, the one on end, you help ’em. I must attend to these girls.”
“T-take her first–Una!” flickered Pem, a spicy flicker still, as she felt a strong grasp on her shoulder and looked up into the face of a broad-shouldered youth in a gray sweater; the engine might explode, but, to the last, they should not say of Toandoah’s daughter that her courage was a Quaker gun.
“Jove! but you’re game,” flashed the youth. “Well, keep up–hang on–I’ll be back in a minute!”
He had to lift the second girlish victim almost bodily out of the water and drag her with him as he wriggled and crawled over the broken ice-pack, to reach a firm spot, where he picked her up and–with all the vigor of an athletic eighteen-year-old–carried her to the shore, now not more than twenty yards off.
“Humph! I was just in time, wasn’t I?” he ejaculated on the transit. “By George! You’ve got pep, if ever a girl had–I’ll wager you pulled your friend out of the parlor-car and held her up! Some horripilation, eh?” breezily. “Now–now what have you and I ever done that the Fates should wish this on to us–that’s what I’d like to know?”
It was what the daring little ski-runner, Pem, herself, had been vaguely wondering; she liked this jolly wit-snapper who preferred his excitement warm.
“Ha! there goes the engine exploding,” he gasped a moment later, as he set her down. “Bursting inward! Now, if it had done the mean thing, burst outward, piling up the agony, doing a whole lot of damage, ’twould have been quicker about it.... Oh–you! Dad,” to a gray-bearded man, with a gray traveling cap pulled down almost to his eyes. “Here, I’ll hand over these girls to you now! Will you look after them? I’d better go back.”