“How did you find Miss Higley, Parson?” Rose-Mary continued to question, with a view to getting the entire story.
“I found her in a mud hole, held fast, but able to help herself somewhat. Then I—I got her up—somehow—.”
“Indeed I was almost unconscious until you dragged my head up to the air,” Miss Higley hastened to say, anxious to give Dorothy her due, for certainly the rescue was a matter of heroic effort, and Miss Higley, being heavy, and, at the same time, unable to help herself, gave Dorothy the most difficult of all the surprising tasks of that eventful afternoon.
“But when she sank that time—like a stone,” suggested Dick to Dorothy.
“Oh, I merely missed catching hold of a plank and I had to go down—I couldn’t keep up.”
“Certainly; why not?” put in Nita Brandt, glad to be able to say something “safe.”
“And you, Lispy,” said Lena to Nita. “You and Adele started the epidemic with your water wings. Next time make it life preservers.”
The girlish spirits, “bottled up” during the period of worry came out with a resounding “pop” now, and the walk home proved even pleasanter than the one to the beach.
“For now,” declared Ned, between her jokes, “we are like the man who laughed at the ugly cow from inside the fence—he found it much funnier to laugh at the cow from outside the fence.”