But out in the brown pother the struggle went on. Hugh John never so much as turned his head. We stood white and gasping, all pretty close together, I can tell you. And once when we saw him swept from his feet and only recovered his balance with an effort—though my heart was in my throat, I said out loud to comfort the others, "Well, anyway, he has taken the school medal for swimming. He has it on him now!"
Then Sir Toady turned on me a face of scorn and anger. He pointed to the gush and swirl of the currents of Solway over the bank of pebbles. "Swim in that!" he cried, "no, he can't! No, nor nobody can. I tell you one of the best swimmers in Scotland was drowned over there in Balcary, within sight of his own house, and a man in a boat within stonethrow!"
But for all that, Toady himself pulled off his coat and waistcoat, and made him ready to go to the rescue (oh, how vainly!). So that in the long run the Maid and I had to hold him down on the beach, half weeping, half desperate, calling on Hugh John, his Hugh John, to come back and slay him upon the spot. As if he was his Hugh John, any more than anybody else's Hugh John—and the two of them fighting like cat and dog nine-tenths of the time! But at times, when his elder brother is in danger or ill, Sir Toady is like that. Janet Sheepshanks speaks yet about his face when he came back from Crusoeing-it with Dinky and Saucy Easedale—all drawn and haggard and white it was. Well, it was like that now. I declare, he turned and struck at us every time that Hugh John stumbled, or looked like being carried away.
"See here, Sis," he gasped, "you let a fellow go, or I'll kill you. I will, mind—if anything happens to My Hugh John—I'll kill you for holding me back like this."
But at this very moment we began to see the lank figure of Hugh John rising higher out of the swirling scum. Presently he scrambled out on the steep beach of pebbles, all dripping. Then he gave himself a shake like a retriever dog, shook his fist at the distant Sir Toady, now sparsely equipped in fluttering linen: "Wait till I get you, you young beast! Just you wait!"
That was what he was saying as plain as print. But Sir Toady, completely reassured, only heaved a long sigh, murmuring, "That's all right!" And went on calmly putting on his clothes, and laughing at the Maid and me for having been frightened. He actually had the cheek to ask us what we had been crying about!
XXVIII
TWICE-TRAVELED PATHS
Then we went to Kirkcudbright, where there is an old castle, very dirty, but where we stayed in the loveliest old inn. It was so "comfy" and home-like at the "Selkirk" that it seemed as if the hostelry had wandered out into the country one fine day and—forgot the way to come back again! We liked it so much because it was kept by a nice jolly man, whose mother had been good to father once when he was ill, and who made the nicest cakes. We were in clover there, I can tell you. Specially because "Mac" (the painter whom, when I was very little, I once named "The Little Brown Bear") came for walks with us, and made us laugh at dinner till we youngsters nearly got sent from the table. Yet it wasn't a bit our fault. He told us a lot of things, and I could see father listening with all his ears, and not even checking Sir Toady when he stole the sugar, though he saw him. I was sure that something would come out of that. You see, I know father's ways. And so it comes about that I don't need to write any of the funny things that we heard that night, or the nights that followed. You have only to read them in the chapters of Little Esson, the part all about Ladas II, and the trip in the caravan. I think that father ought really to have sent some of the money he got to "The Little Brown Bear"—but I don't believe he ever did.