After that, they set the barrow straight and proceeded quietly, pausing every now and again for Sammy to explain a lecture on hop-scotch by examples. Baby Jane herself had never played the game, and thought it fun, for a change, to be a pupil. They soon grew so excited that they had to stop and play a little hop-scotch tournament.
Coolness is half the battle in games, and again Mary Carmichael proved her prowess, and was proclaimed champion hop-schotcher of the Southern Sahara. Perhaps Sammy himself could have won easily, but Baby Jane made him a little sign, and, like the young sportsman that he was, he did not spoil the game, but allowed himself to be beaten.
'But you know I could have won, Miss?' he asked anxiously of Baby Jane when it was over.
'Of course I do,' said she; 'you were very unselfish'; which quite satisfied Sammy.
This caused a good deal of delay, and they made up for it by hurrying at a great rate afterwards. Nevertheless they contrived even then to amuse themselves as they went, for the ingenious Sammy had thought of leap-frog.
It was a picturesque sight.
It was a picturesque sight. Like a river of living waves they flowed across the desert—occasionally a wave broke, but generally they pursued the even tenor of their way. Poor Baby Jane felt that it would be unladylike to play, so had to keep company with Edouardo, who had a mind above leap-frog, with the barrow.
'If only I had my gymnasium things with me!' she sighed.
By this time it was growing dusk, and they could not clearly see their way. It must have been partly for this reason, and partly because they were carried away by the excitement of the game, that—horrible to relate!—a gully suddenly yawned before them, and, before the leading leapers could give warning, the living river was changed into a living cascade, which poured over the brink and down with a rush and rattle to the bottom. Luckily, there was a thick bed of ferns and moss to receive them; but as it was, the lowest layer of creatures had all the breath bumped out of them by the shower of heavy bodies that dropped plump upon them.