Mrs. Alexander received the first genuine shock in many moons, and she acted like the old-time Maggie whom Mr. Alexander remembered with regret. “My goodness, Ebeneezer!” cried she, forgetting the expensive cane in her fear for Algy’s life, and using it to hold down for him to hold to. “Jump in and save him quick!”
“That ain’t the ocean, Maggie,” retorted her husband. “A little warm water won’t hurt his head.”
“Oh, you cruel man. Won’t some one save the boy?” pleaded she.
“Jack!” shouted Mr. Dalken, “swim up and give him help to climb up on the steps.”
Jack had been hovering near enough to Algy to grip him when he had been sufficiently tested, and now he reached out and grabbed him by the coat collar and propelled him over to the steep steps which led up from the pool.
“There you are, my son,” laughed Jack, as he tried to show Algy how he was to hold fast to the handrail.
But the frightened young man appeared to have lost all sense, for he merely hung limp from Jack’s grasp. After a short time of having to hold up his weight, Jack got tired, and said: “I’m going to drop him if he won’t help himself. I can’t carry him out as though he had been drowned, Dalky!”
The word “drowned” seemed to rouse the dormant brain in Algy, and he frantically caught hold of anything within reach. Fortunately it happened to be the steps, and soon he had his feet upon them. Then Jack boosted from behind, while Mrs. Alexander caught hold of his hair and pulled from above.
“Ouch! Ouch!” screamed Algy, but he feared to let go his grasp on the ladder in order to make the hand clutching his long blonde hair release its hold.
Thus he came up over the top of the platform, a dripping, drowned-looking, lank young man, the tears streaming from his eyes, and the water streaming from every wrinkle in his sopping clothes. He presented such a pathetic yet comic picture that his friends wavered between a desire to laugh and a desire to sympathize. Eventually both were indulged, but Algy paid no heed to either.