Colonel Roberts examined the crab for a minute.
“I’m afraid he’s dead, Peggy,” he said. “They don’t turn up their toes that way unless they’re dead.”
Peggy knelt down, so as to come nearer to the tub, and looked down into it. Then she uttered a little wail. “O father, I think they’re all looking sick somehow! Look at my flounders!”
One of the flounders, alas! was dead already, as well as the crab, and the other looked rather sorry for himself. Colonel Roberts, however, would not let Peggy cry.
“Look here, child,” he said; “they want to be put back into the sea—that’s all. There are too many of them all crowded together in the tub; we’ll take them back to a pool on the shore, and they will soon be as frisky as ever again.”
“Not the dead ones,” said Peggy solemnly.
“No, not the poor dead ones, but the sick ones. Go and fetch me a pail, and we’ll carry them down to the shore.”
“But then I won’t ever see them again,” Peggy objected.
“Now, don’t be a selfish little girl. You would rather they lived and were happy, wouldn’t you?”
“Ye—s,” Peggy faltered.