“Oh, my dear, my dear!” she wept, “what a shock you have given me! I thought you were gone!”
“Not so bad as that,” was the contrite answer. Cynthia interpreted “gone” as meaning “dead,” and naturally read into the other woman’s anxiety her own knowledge of the disaster to the boat. “We had a bit of an upset—that is all—and the bread always flops to the floor buttered side down, doesn’t it? So we had to struggle ashore on the wrong bank. It couldn’t be helped—that is, the accident couldn’t—but I ought not to have been on the river at such a late hour. Do forgive me, dear Mrs. Devar!”
By this time the girl’s left arm was around her friend’s portly form; in her intense eagerness to assuage Mrs. Devar’s agitation she began to stroke her hair with the disengaged hand. A deeply sympathetic landlady, a number of servants, and most of the feminine guests in the hotel—all the men were down on the quay—had gathered to murmur their congratulations; but Mrs. Devar, dismayed by Cynthia’s action, which might have brought about a catastrophe, revived with phenomenal suddenness.
“My dear child,” she cried, extricating herself from the encircling arm, “do let me look at you! I want to make sure that you are not injured. The boat upset, you say. Why, your clothes must be wringing wet!”
Cynthia laughed. She had guessed why her chaperon wished to keep her literally at arm’s length. She spread her skirts with a quick gesture that relieved an awkward situation.
“Not a drop on my clothes,” she said gleefully. “The water just touched the soles of my boots, but before you could say ‘Jack Robinson’ Fitzroy had whisked me out of the skiff—and landed me on dry land.”
“You were in shallow water, then?” put in the smiling proprietress.
“Oh no, fairly deep. Fitzroy was up to his waist in the stream.”
“And the boat upset?” came the amazed chorus.
“I didn’t quite mean that. What actually happened was this. I discovered that the hour was rather late, and Fitzroy was rowing down stream at a great pace when some sunken thing, a tree-root he thinks, caught the side of the boat and started a plank. I was so taken by surprise that I should have sat right there and gone to the bottom with the boat, but Fitzroy jumped overboard straight away and hiked me out.”