At this moment Harry leaped boldly over the fence and landed on the other side, but not quite where he had expected. Either the brook was wider than he supposed or else his foot slipped, but somehow, instead of alighting on the grassy bank he struck in about two feet of water, clutched wildly at the branch of an overhanging tree and then fell over on his back. Laura began to laugh, but Bruce, fearing that his friend might have been hurt by his fall, ran down to help him. He crossed the fence just as Harry climbed up on the shore sputtering and blowing and wiping the mud and water from his face. He was completely soaked, and his cap was drifting rapidly down stream.
“Are you hurt?” demanded Bruce anxiously.
“No, of course I’m not, but I’ll bet you Tommy Martin never made that jump; Laura just said that to get me into the water. Never mind she’ll catch it when we get home. What are you laughing at up there?” he continued, turning suddenly and addressing himself to his sister who was standing by the roadside with amusement pictured on her face. “Perhaps you won’t think it so funny after a while,” continued the boy, angrily, and then Bruce, fearing that he too might be moved to laughter by his comical appearance, ran off down the stream to recover the lost cap.
Harry was soaking wet, and there was nothing for him to do but take off his coat and waistcoat and place them on a big rock on which the sun had been shining all day, while he himself sat down beside them, wrung the water out of his trousers and began to dry off. He was in the midst of the drying process when Bruce said to Laura in a low whisper, “I’ve just got an idea in my head about that man. Doesn’t Mr. Dexter live near here?”
“Yes,” replied the young girl, “about a quarter of a mile further on.”
“Then he was going that way when he passed us, wasn’t he?”
“Certainly he was; why I wonder if it could be possible that he was going up there. Do let us hurry on.”
“I do believe that you two have got some sort of a secret between you,” exclaimed Harry, suddenly looking up. “What man are you talking about? I tell you you’d better let me know all about it.”
“Secret,” said Laura, slyly, “there’s no secret in what I was saying, because everybody knows it. I was just telling him about Kitty and you, and there’s lots more things I could tell him if I wanted to.”
Harry dropped the conversation at this point, and a minute or two later he picked up his coat and vest, declared that he was dry enough anyway and proposed that they should continue their walk. In a few minutes he had completely recovered his good humor and offered Bruce to run him a race to the next gateway. Bruce accepted the challenge, never doubting that he could win it, but he found to his surprise that the slim, active, young New Yorker was a much fleeter runner than he was, and, do what he could, strain every nerve as he might, he reached the goal completely out of breath and fully fifty feet behind his adversary, whom he found standing by the gate post looking, as he expressed it, “as fresh as a daisy,” and laughing all over at his own success.