"Good Lord!" faltered Ellis, as the dragon turned with a little shriek. "Is the whole Summer School being washed away?"
"No," she said excitedly, "but the dam broke. Helen and Professor Rawson tried to save the swan-boat—we were giving tableaux from "Lohengrin" and "The Rheingold"—and—oh! oh! oh! such a torrent came! Helen—there she is in armour—Helen tried to paddle the boat, but the swans pulled the other way, and they flapped so wildly that Helen called for help. Then one of the Rhine-maidens—Professor Rawson—waded in and got aboard, but the paddle broke and they were adrift. Then one of those horrid swans got loose, and everybody screamed, and the water rose higher and higher, and nobody helped anybody, so, so—as I swim well, I jumped in without waiting to undress—you see I had been acting the dragon, Fafnir, and I went in just as I was; but the papier-mâché dragon kept turning turtle with me, and first I knew I was being spun around like a top."
There was a silence; they stood watching Jones scrambling after the swan-boat, which had come to grief in shallow water. Professor Rawson, the Rhine-maiden, gave one raucous and perfunctory shriek as Jones floundered alongside—for the garb of the normal Rhine-daughter is scanty, and Professor Rawson's costume, as well as her maidenly physique, was almost anything except redundant.
As for Helen, sometime known as brown-eyes, she rose to her slim height, all glittering in tin armour, and gave Jones a smile of heavenly gratitude that shot him through and through his Norfolk jacket.
"Don't look!" said Professor Rawson, in a voice which, between the emotions of recent terror and present bashfulness, had dwindled to a squeak. "Don't look; I'm going to jump." And jump she did, taking to the water with a trifle less grace than the ordinary Rhine-maiden.
There was a spattering splash, a smothered squawk which may have been emitted by the swan, and the next moment Professor Rawson was churning toward dry land, her wreath of artificial seaweed over one eye, her spectacles glittering amid her dank tresses.
Jones looked up at brown-eyes balancing in the bow of the painted boat.
"I can get you ashore quite dry—if you don't mind," he said.
She considered the water; she considered Jones; she looked carefully at the wallowing Rhine-daughter.
"Are you sure you can?" she asked.