“I don’t want to go to bed, I want to watch Harriet catch fithh.”
“Oh, you’ve scared them all out of the pond,” complained Margery.
“I hope you fall in, too, Buthter,” was Tommy’s parting salute, as she ran shivering to the tent. Fifteen minutes later, she emerged clad in dry clothing and apparently none the worse for her recent wetting.
In the meantime Harriet had returned to her fishing, laughing softly over her companion’s mishap and their argument following the plunge. There were screams of delight when finally she landed a trout. Nor did she stop until the sun dipped behind the western hills and the speckled beauties went down into the depths of the stream, or skulked under the edge of its banks for the night. The result of the fishing was a dozen fine trout, the smallest weighing only a little under a half pound and the largest weighing nearly two pounds, according to the guardian’s estimate.
Harriet insisted on dressing the fish that night, something she knew better how to do than did any of her companions. The fish were then put in a pail, the cover tightly fitted and the pail hung in the old mill race, where the cold water would flow over the receptacle all night long.
“There,” exclaimed Harriet after her work was finished. “We shall have a breakfast fit for a king. Now I’m going in bathing. I am so covered with dust and grime that I’m ashamed of myself. Come, girls, aren’t you going in with me?”
“What! Go into that ice cold water?” demanded Margery. “No, thank you. I’ll heat some water and take my bath in the tent.”
“I will go in with you, Harriet,” offered Hazel.
“So will I,” added the guardian. “Come, let’s get ready before the air gets colder. Tommy already has had her bath.”
Had they not been inured to cold water and exposure, the experiment might have been followed by severe colds if nothing worse. But the Meadow-Brook Girls were well seasoned from living out of doors for the greater part of the summer and from bathing in the cold stream at Camp Wau-Wau. The first plunge into the pond brought gasps and shivers, then they splashed about in the water, swimming across the pond and back, again and again, while Margery stood on the bank shivering out of pure sympathy for them.