"He's all right; but you'd better get him into dry clothes, and yourself, too."
"Change on the bank," said Doll, seizing a bundle from the keeper. "It's as hot as an oven in the sun. Why, Scarlett's sitting up! I thought when we laid into him on the bank that he was too far gone, didn't you? I suppose"—hesitating—"Crack?"
Lord Newhaven shook his head.
"I must go back to my boys now," he said, "or they will be getting into mischief."
Doll nodded. He and Lord Newhaven had had a hard fight to get the leaking boat to land with Hugh at the bottom of it. It had filled ominously when Doll ceased baling to help to drag in the heavy, unconscious body.
There had been a moment when, inapprehensive as he was, Doll had remembered, with a qualm, that Lord Newhaven could not swim.
"Every fellow ought to swim," was the moral he drew from the incident and repeated to his wife, who, struck by the soundness of the remark, repeated it to the Gresleys.
Lord Newhaven retraced his steps slowly along the bank in his water-logged boots. He was tired, and he did not hurry, for he could see in the distance two small figures sitting faithfully on a log where he had left them.
"Good little chaps," he said, half aloud.
In spite of himself his thoughts went back to Hugh. His feelings towards him had not changed, but they had been forced during the last half-hour out of their original intrenchments into the open, and were liable to attack from new directions.