To please her the sergeant wiped Eugene’s eyes with it; then he said, “Can you speak now, boy?”
Eugene struggled to a sitting posture, and stared solemnly from under sticky eyelashes at them.
Bridget tried not to laugh; but she was not used to controlling herself, and she had also been a little frightened. She began with a little squeal, then she became hysterical, and laughed and cried in the same breath.
“If ye’s could only see yourselves,” she said spasmodically; “so gummed up, like two alligators. I ask yer pardon humbly, but it’s too ludicrous that ye are—and that boy that’s always like a picture, so nate and clane, and yerself, Mr. Officer, that wears the fine uniform—sure, you’re worse than the men in the subway with the clay trousers.”
The sergeant smiled grimly. “I don’t wonder you’re amused,” he said. “Tell me, Eugene, how you got into this pickle.”
The boy cleaned two of his fingers on the grass, and took a last remnant of earth from his mouth. “It was my cap that I was after,” he said. “The wind blew it among the rushes. I went to get it on what I thought was a point of green grass. It was soft mud beneath. I went in to my ankles, and I could with difficulty draw my feet out. Then I walked the wrong way, and fell into a deep hole. When I rose, I found myself in to my waist, and bewildered and sinking.”
“Why did you not stand still and call for help?” asked the sergeant. “There are always people about.”
“I should have felt like a coward,” said Eugene, proudly holding up his mud-plastered head.