SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY RUSS PULLED THE BOAT TOWARD HIM.
Just about this time Mrs. Bunker, who had finished setting the table, went into the pantry, and from a window she could look out into the back yard. She saw what Russ and Rose were doing—wading in the pond with their shoes and stockings off, Rose under an umbrella and Russ in his rain coat.
"Oh, children! what are you doing?" called Mrs. Bunker.
"We're trying to save the kittens!" answered Russ. "I'll have 'em in a minute."
As he spoke he reached out with the clothes pole Rose had handed him, and he managed to touch the board on which crouched the little family, mother and kittens all mewing now. Slowly and carefully Russ pulled the board toward him, and when it was almost within his reach the mother cat took one of the kittens up in her mouth. It was as though she knew they were going to be rescued, and as though she were getting ready for it.
"Oh, the poor little dears!" exclaimed Rose. She reached forward to lift off the other three little kittens, while Russ dropped the pole and got ready to take care of the mother cat. But Rose found that to hold three kittens she needed to let go of the umbrella, so she tossed it on the porch back of her.
Then she quickly gathered the three half-drowned kittens in her arms, while Russ took the mother cat and one kitten, which the mother cat still held in her mouth. Then, as the board floated away, the children carried their new pets into the house.
"Oh, my dears, you're all wet!" cried Mother Bunker, while Vi and Laddie and Mun Bun and Margy crowded around to look at the rescued animals.
"Well, if we hadn't gone out in the rain we wouldn't have seen the mother cat and her little ones, and maybe they'd be drowned, so it's a good thing we went in wading," declared Russ.