“Come, my dear,� said Skelton, soothingly, “let me pick you up and carry you home.�
“I d-d-don’t want to go home,� wailed Sylvia.
“But something must be done for your foot, child.�
“Then take me to Deerchase, and let Mammy Kitty do it.�
Skelton was puzzled by the child’s unwillingness to go home. But Sylvia soon enlightened him.
“If I g-go home mamma will scold me, and she will cry over me, and make me keep on crying, and that will make my head ache; and if I can get s-something done for my foot—�
“But won’t your mother be frightened about you if I take you to Deerchase?� asked Skelton.
“No—ooo—oo!� bawled Sylvia, still weeping; “she lets me stay out until sundown. And she’ll make such a fuss over my foot if I go home!�
Determination was expressed in every line of Sylvia’s tearful, pretty face. Skelton silently went back to the shore, got her shoes and stockings, went to his boat and brought it up, Sylvia meanwhile keeping up a furious beating of the water with her forked stick to frighten the crabs off. Skelton lifted her in the boat, and they sailed along to the Deerchase landing. Sylvia wiped her feet on the curtain of her sunbonnet, put on her stockings and one shoe, and nursed the injured foot tenderly. Skelton lifted her out on the little stone pier he had had built, and then proceeded to take down the sail and tie the boat.
“I think,� said Sylvia calmly, “you’ll have to carry me to the house.�