Max turned and called back over his shoulder.
"I can hear water dripping like everything, and I guess he's gone and crawled out on the bank all right!"
"Sure I have," said Steve just then from behind the bushes; "and I've got that frog, too. He's worth taking a ducking for, let me tell you. There never was such a buster of a greenback croaker. If you could hear him sing out 'more r-rum! more r-rum!' you'd think it was a bass drum arollin'. Here I am, fellows, dripping wet in the bargain. I must have slipped, I reckon."
When Max came upon the speaker, and surveyed his soaked figure, he burst into a shout of laughter.
"Well, I should think you did slip!" he exclaimed; "you're always slipping, seems like, Steve, and it's because you're in such an awful hurry to do things that you get into a muss. You certainly are a sight now, with all that mud on you. If pretty Bessie French could only see you I can fancy her nose would go up in the air, because that mud isn't as sweet as violets or roses, Steve."
"Well, what's done can't be undone, they say!" declared the other, with a reckless laugh, which was Steve all over; "better luck next time, I say. Here, Toby, what d'ye think of that for a saddle? Do the needful to him, won't you please, for I've got to scrape some of this nasty black muck off my trousers legs?"
"Here, this won't do, Steve," observed Max, severely; "you're beginning to shiver right now, and it'll get worse before long. You're soaked to the skin, chances are. It might be all well enough in the good old summer-time to let your duds dry on you, but not in this raw April weather. We've got to postpone the balance of our frog hunt, and make a fire."
"What for?" asked Steve, petulantly, because he did not much fancy allowing the others to make him out to be a weakling.
"To dry your clothes, if you must know it; and we won't take no for an answer either, eh, boys?" and Max winked toward the other two, who immediately chimed in vociferously to echo his sentiments.
"Oh! well, have it your way," grumbled Steve, though there was a gleam in his eyes that showed how he secretly appreciated this solicitude over his-health displayed by his chums. "P'raps I will feel some better if I get dried out. I had a cough last winter that worried my folks, and mebbe I shouldn't take chances."