CHAPTER XVI
OVERBOARD
Mrs. Brown was used to seeing things happen to Bunny and Sue. They were lively children, getting into mischief fully as often as other tots of their same age did, and it was not unusual to have one of them hurt slightly.
So when Sue ran up to her mother and began to cry out about Bunny's toe, Mrs. Brown looked down the beach where she had left the two children playing. There she saw Bunny dancing around on one foot in a shallow pool of water, left there when the tide went out. And as he danced on one foot Bunny held the other up in the air, and he was crying something which his mother could not hear.
"Sue," asked Mrs. Brown, as she hurried down the slope leading to the beach proper, "did Bunny step on a broken bottle and cut his toe?"
"No, Mother, it isn't that," answered the little girl. "I don't know just what it is. I was making a little house on the sand, and Bunny was wading in the water. All of a sudden he yelled, and told me to go and get you 'cause there was something the matter with his toe."
"He probably cut himself," said Mrs. Brown, and she began to search in her pocket for an extra handkerchief. It would not be the first time Bunny or Sue had suffered a cut foot because of stepping on a sharp shell or a piece of glass while in wading.
But when Mrs. Brown and Sue reached the edge of the little pool in which Bunny was hopping about on one foot, holding himself up by leaning on a piece of driftwood he had picked up and was using as a crutch, his mother saw what the matter was.
"Take it off my toe! Take it off my toe!" cried Bunny.
"It's a big, pinching crab," said Mrs. Brown. "Oh, Bunny, I'm so sorry! Come out of the water and I'll make it let go of you. Come out!"