As Molly was looking toward the hotel, she happened to espy the three English girls tripping down the path in Indian file, swinging long towels in their hands.
“They are actually going in bathing,” said Molly, pretending that this was what she was laughing at.
“I want to go bavin’,” echoed Donald, hopping up and down on the great loose cobble-stones. “I want to go bavin’.”
In his excitement he lost his unsteady footing, and pitching headlong into the fish-net, became entangled in it like a fly in a cobweb.
Molly extricated him as deftly and quickly as she could, though this was a work of time, because he struggled and twisted himself about and kept catching his active little fingers in the meshes.
But the annoying little incident had not diverted the boy in the least from his original desire. He was no sooner free than he repeated emphatically,—
“I say, I want to go bavin’.”
“Not to-day, precious,” answered Molly, smoothing his hair, which the net had tossed this way and that, till the child’s head resembled a thistle gone to seed. “We can’t any of us go into the ocean to-day, not even Kirke. We didn’t bring our bathing-suits with us, you see, Donny.”
Her reply provoked from her little brother a heartrending shriek which drew the three English lassies in haste to his side.
“Poor little fellow, we saw him fall into that net. Is he dreadfully hurt?” cried the eldest, whom her sisters called Edith.