Before half an hour had passed, the four children, all armed with fishing-poles, were intently wiggling in the water, catching their hooks in the stones by the side of the well, entangling their lines, digging their elbows into each other’s sides, in their frantic attempts to pull their hooks loose; scolding, pushing, and getting generally excited.
Every few moments Tom would pull Bess back by her sun-bonnet, and save her from tumbling over in her eagerness; but so far from being grateful to her deliverer, Bess resented the treatment indignantly.
“Stop jerking my head so,” she cried.
“You’ll be in, in a minute; you’d have been in then if I hadn’t jerked you,” answered Tom.
“Well, what if I had! Let me alone. If I go in, that’s my own lookout.”
“Your own look in, you mean. My gracious, wouldn’t you astonish the toads down there! But you’d get your face clean.”
“Now, Tom, you let me be; I ’most had it that time!”
“So you’ve said forty times. This is all humbug; I’m going down on the rope for it.”
“Oh, no, Tom, please don’t. Indeed, you’ll be drowned; the rope will break; you’ll kill yourself; you’ll catch cold,” cried Bess, in alarm. She could fight Tom all day long, when in the mood for it; but to see him deliberately rush into danger, or to contemplate the fact that a hair of his precious head might be hurt, was more than our intrepid Bess could bear.