"Anybody hurt back there?" asked Mr. Brown, who, at the first feeling that something was wrong, had put on the brakes. The automobile would have stopped anyhow, as the wheels were held fast in the mud and the broken pieces of the bridge.
"No, we're all right," answered Uncle Tad, looking at Bunny and Sue, who, at the first sound of something wrong had crept closer to their mother.
"My nose feels as if I had bumped it," said Bunny, rubbing his "smeller" as he sometimes called it. "Though I don't remember doing it," he went on.
"I guess you did it when you jumped out of your seat," said his mother. "We all jumped, it came so suddenly."
"And I dropped my Teddy bear and Uncle Tad stepped on her," murmured Sue with sorrow in her tones. "Look, Uncle Tad, you've turned on her eyes!"
And, surely enough, the electric eyes of Sallie Malinda were glowing brightly. Uncle Tad must have stepped on the switch button in the toy's back and turned it on.
"But I guess she's all right," went on Sue, as she turned off the switch and then turned it on again to see that it was working as it should. "You didn't hurt her, Uncle Tad," she said.
"I'm glad of that, Sue," said the old soldier. "Now I guess I'd better get around to see if I can help your father get the automobile out of the ditch."
Dix and Splash, who had been racing up and down the road, came back, panting and with their long red tongues hanging out of their mouths, to see what the trouble was. They looked at the ditched automobile with their heads on one side, and then sort of barked at one another. It was as if Dix said:
"Well, what do you think about it, Splash? Do you think we had better stay here and help them?"