“How can I help you?” said Dean Priest hoarsely, as if to himself. “I cannot reach you—and it looks as if the slightest touch or jar would send that broken earth over the brink. I must go for a rope—and to leave you here alone—like this. Can you wait, child?”
“Yes,” breathed Emily. She smiled at him to encourage him—the little soft smile that began at the corners of her mouth and spread over her face. Dean Priest never forgot that smile—and the steadfast child-eyes looking out through it from the little face that seemed so perilously near the brink.
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” he said. “I can’t go very fast—I’m a bit lame, you see. But don’t be frightened—I’ll save you. I’ll leave my dog to keep you company. Here, Tweed.”
He whistled—a great, tawny-gold dog came in sight.
“Sit right there, Tweed, till I come back. Don’t stir a paw—don’t wag a tail—talk to her only with your eyes.”
Tweed sat down obediently and Dean Priest disappeared.
Emily lay there and dramatized the whole incident for her Jimmy-book. She was a little frightened still, but not too frightened to see herself writing it all out the next day. It would be quite a thrilling bit.
She liked to know the big dog was there. She was not so learned in lore of dogs as in lore of cats. But he looked very human and trusty watching her with great kindly eyes. A grey kitten was an adorable thing—but a grey kitten would not have sat there and encouraged her. “I believe,” thought Emily, “that a dog is better than a cat when you’re in trouble.”
It was half an hour before Dean Priest returned.
“Thank God you haven’t gone over,” he muttered. “I hadn’t to go as far as I feared—I found a rope in an empty boat up-shore and took it. And now—if I drop the rope down to you, are you strong enough to hold it while the earth goes and then hang on while I pull you up?”