Mary looked at her a moment, turning this statement over in her mind. “You really are, in lots of ways. It’s that trick you have of knowing what you don’t know at all,” said Mary, after that moment.
“Hurrah for Mistress Mary and her definitions! That’s called intuition, Molly!” cried Jane.
To the amazement of both girls their mother came hurrying into the dining-room. Her step was quick, her face flushed, her whole expression and air alert as they had not yet seen it.
“Oh, girls,” she cried breathlessly, “where can Anne be? Do you think you can do anything? There’s a boy in the garden in a frightful way! He dashed in at the side gate and quite crumpled up before me! He’s wet and besmeared with mud; I fancy he’s been rescued from drowning, or some one has tried to drown him, and he barely made the garden, running away! I can’t leave him there! Come, for pity’s sake! Oh, where are Anne and Abbie? Why don’t we keep a man about all day?” She wrung her hands frantically as she spoke.
Mary had dashed into the cold closet, back of the pantry, and brought out a glass of brandy. She snatched up the bottle of household ammonia that stood on the shelf beside the pantry sink, not to take time to go after proper restorative ammonia. Jane had flown to the kitchen and had wrenched Abbie from her steak at its critical moment, then had shrieked Anne’s name until she had heard and had almost fallen downstairs, recognizing the cry as announcing danger.
Mrs. Garden led the way, as light of foot and fleet as her children. Mary and Jane followed and Anne behind them, not able to move as quickly as the rest. A little in arrear of the other four lumbered Abbie, whose joints were refractory, carrying a pail of water and a glass, also a large palm leaf fan.
A short distance from the chair in which the girls had left their mother lay a boy of childish build. A gray felt sombrero hat covered his head; he was as wet and muddy as Mrs. Garden had described him, but he was able to move for, as the rescue party came up, he rolled over on his face, having been turned as if to get more air, and Jane’s keen eyes saw him pull his hat tighter down over his head by the hand farthest from them, slipped up to catch its broad brim. The lad wore grayish knickerbockers and a loose flannel shirt that had been white, but the mud with which he was generously decorated concealed its original colour and barely revealed that his stockings were black and his shoes old tan ones.
“Wait a minute,” said Jane, thinking that there was something familiar in the boy’s drooping shoulders and build. She put out her hands to check Mary, who, overflowing with sympathy, was hastening to lift the lad and pour between his cold lips a little of the brandy which she carried. “Wait a minute, Anne; let mother turn him over.”
Mary stopped, but looked at Jane, astonished. Anne gave her a sharp glance.
“All right, Jane; I think maybe it would be better,” Anne said.