There was a fringe of bushes along both sides of the creek. This path beside the railroad tracks forked, and one branch of it led right down to the stepping stones. The water was rough; but there was no ice, and the top of each stone was bare and dry.
Years and years before the people living in the neighborhood had put these flat-top boulders into the creek-bed, because the light wooden bridges were forever being carried away by the floods. Of course that was before the day of the railroad.
Tavia started across the stones, and Dorothy followed her. One after the other they got over safely. But Ned Ebony’s shoe came untied and she was last.
Perhaps she was careless; perhaps she tripped on her shoelace; perhaps she was heedless enough to step on the edge of a certain small boulder that Tavia warned her was not exactly steady.
However it was, the boulder rolled, poor Edna “sprawled” in the air for a moment to get her balance, and then the rock turned over and she went “splash!” into the water.
CHAPTER II
CELIA MORAN, OF THE “FINDLING”
“To the rescue!” shrieked Tavia, charging back to the stepping stones. “Forward, my bold hearties! Man overboard! Who’s got a rope?”
Then she lost the power of speech in a burst of laughter; for certain it was, poor Ned Ebony was an awfully funny sight!
But Dorothy was at hand to do something practical. She sprang back upon the nearest boulder to the one that had turned under her unfortunate schoolmate, and in half a minute she had dragged Edna out of the cold water.