I was rather disappointed that he was not bigger and fiercer looking, for I had fancied that he must be something like the great dragon with which St. George had such a terrible time, only more tame, and not quite so big. But there was something in his quiet, steady look that I could not get my eyes away from; so I looked at him and he looked at me, till Philip took me by the hand, saying—"Come; we're going to sit up on the old door there, in the sun, and try who likes butter."
We all got seated on the door, and they proceeded to test each other's love for butter, by holding a buttercup under their chins. If it made a golden reflection upon their throats, it was a sure sign they did like butter; if it made no reflection, then they did not like it.
After it was decided that I had a strong regard for butter, my thoughts returned to the old bull-frog, and I crawled along to that corner of the door which overhung the spring, and lay down flat on my stomach, to get a good view of him. I had not lain there long before the boys got through with their buttercup experiment, and proposed to go home, as it was nearly dinner-time, they thought. With one accord they jumped off the door, and, quick as a flash, it tilted up, and headforemost I went, for all the world just like a bull-frog, plump into the spring!
The barrel was not wide enough for me to turn around in, even if I had thought of it. But I only thought, for an instant, how bright and pretty the sandy bottom was, through which the up-springing water came bubbling softly against my lips and cheek—then my head seemed to become very full—I felt as though I were choking, and there was a sound in my ears like that of a wind in the woods; then everything grew dark and seemed to stop. The boys were so frightened they could do nothing, and there I stuck. There I might have stuck till my little legs had grown so stiff, and still, and cold, that it had been beyond the power of even India-nankeen trowsers to wake them into life, and warmth, and vanity again.
But, happily for me, there was a woman spinning just outside the door of the little house on the hill, who, with the instinctive watchfulness which mothers have for all children, had kept her eye upon us all the time, and when I was tilted into the spring, she ran quickly down, seized me by the heels, drew me out, and carried me, all white and cold as death, to my mother. By the time she reached our house, there was a little fluttering of the heart, which, after they had rubbed me awhile with flannels dipped in hot rum, gradually increased to the usual regular beat; soon the lips grew red again, and directly the eyes opened. They were a little vacant and glassy at first, and I felt bewildered, but it was not long before I remembered all about the whole affair.
The first words I spoke were to ask about my trowsers. They brought them in to me, all wet and soiled, where they had rubbed against the green sedges about the spring. The sight of them in this condition distressed me so much that old Wangie, who had been running about wringing her hands and crying—"Oh, little massa am dead, sartin!"— but who was now overjoyed to find that I was not, declared they should be washed and ironed that very day. She started off with them in such a hurry that she trod on the tail of her favorite cat, Jim, who was washing his face with his paw by the door. Wangie (bless her old black face!—she's dead now;) would have stopped and petted the poor cat, usually, but this time to the great astonishment of all, for she had the kindest heart in the world, she gave him a prodigious kick, which sent him full two yards down the hall.
My mother had learned all about the accident from the boys and the woman who saved me, and when, after a few hours, I was able to get up, she took me quietly into her room and explained to me how wrong it was to go over to the meadow without asking her permission, and told me that, although I had been pretty severely punished already, yet, in order to make me remember never to do so again, she should put my trowsers away in the drawer for two weeks, during which I was to wear frocks again.
What a blow was this to me! How all my pride and glory of the morning were humbled to the earth! All the little world of hopes and vanities which my foolish heart had wrought, was scattered to chaos again! I bore up under it pretty well the rest of the day, ate my supper in silence, and went quietly to bed; but after mother had gone down, and I was left alone, I could stand it no longer. I lay there in the dark sobbing and sobbing, till I sobbed myself to sleep.
So ended my first day in trowsers!