"Yes, and wonderful catcher!" said Dorothy. "Just think how he caught us—Ugh! It makes me shiver to think of being tossed in the air over those black, raging waves. We must have looked like little bundles flying from the ship. Wasn't Jack just wonderful, to hold on to us as he did, and work so hard looking for—for the others, too. Mercy! if we only get our feet wet now, Liddy seems to think it's all over with us,—and yet, look what we stood then! Little mites of babies, soaked to the skin, out in an open boat on the ocean all that terrible time."
"Much we cared for that," was Don's comment. "Probably we laughed, or played pat-a-cake, or—"
"Played pat-a-cake!" interrupted Dorry, with intense scorn of Donald's ignorance of baby ways—"babies only six weeks old playing pat-a-cake! I guess not. It's most likely we kicked and screamed like anything; isn't it, Uncle?"
Uncle nodded, with a strange mixture of gravity and amusement, and Donald added, earnestly:
"Whether we cried or not, Jack was a trump. A real hero, wasn't he, Uncle? I can see him now—catching us; then, when the other boat capsized, chucking us into the arms of some one in our boat, and plunging into the sea to save all he could, but able to get back alone, after all." (The children had talked about the shipwreck so often that they felt as if they remembered the awful scene.) "He was nearly dead by that time, you know."
"Yes, and nearly dead or not, if he hadn't come back," chirped Dorothy, who was growing tired of the tragic side of Donald's picture,—"if he hadn't come back to take charge of us, and take us on board the big ship—"
"The Cumberland," said Don.
"Yes, the Cumberland, or whatever she was called; if the Cumberland had not come along the next day, and Jack hadn't climbed on board with us, and wrapped us in blankets, and fed us and so on, it wouldn't have been quite so gay!"
Now, nothing could have been in worse taste than the conclusion of this speech, and Dorothy knew it; but she had spoken in pure defiance of solemnity. There had been quite enough of that for one evening.
Uncle George, dazed, troubled, and yet in some vague way inexpressibly comforted, was quietly looking first at one speaker, then at the other, when Liddy opened the door with a significant, "Mr. Reed, sir, did you ring?"