The two girls ran down-stairs to the lower floor. Part of this was taken up, as we have already seen, by dressing-rooms, but it was only a small part. The larger space was occupied by the great swimming-tank, five feet deep, and twenty by thirty feet in area. The tank was not used now, but the water was still connected, and could be turned on by special permission. Now, accordingly, the water in the bottom was about two feet deep, and the whole surface was a blaze of autumn colours, great branches of maple, oak, and ash covering it completely.
"Pretty, isn't it?" said Bertha. "Like a little sunset sea all alone by itself, without any sun to set. The next question is, how are we to get at them?"
"Oh, that's easy enough!" said Peggy. "I can reach them easily from the edge, and I'll hand them over to you."
Suiting the action to the word, she climbed up on the broad marble slab which formed the edge of the great tank.
Then, bending down, she brought up a great branch of golden maple, fresh and dripping. She shook it, and a diamond shower fell back on the dark space left vacant; then another branch floated quietly over and filled the space again.
"You'll be wet through!" said Bertha. "I don't suppose you care?"
"No, indeed! I'd rather be wet than not, when I'm doing things."
"I'll remember that," said Bertha, slyly, "and come round with a watering-can next time you are reciting your rhetoric. Give me some red now; oh, that is a beauty! There! that's enough for one load; unless you see just one more little one that is superlatively beautiful."
"That is just what I do see! Hold on a minute! this is such a beauty, you must have it, if I—oh!"
Peggy had been leaning as far as she could over the broad tank, fishing for the gay branch, which floated provokingly just out of reach. At last she touched it—grasped it—drew it toward her; when all in a moment she slipped on the marble, now wet and glossy with the falling drops, clutched the air—slipped again—and fell headlong into the tank, with a mighty splash.