Very likely the phenomenon would have gone unexplained to this day had not both the Rosser twins fallen into the fountain simultaneously, contrary to their usual custom, which is for one of them to take the careless plunge while the other dances frantically on terra firma and yells till help comes. Madam Tallafferr once termed them “Death's playmates,” because of this ineradicable passion for gambling on the brink of the pool which is just deep enough to cover their two-year-old heads. On this occasion Old Sally was the nearest aid. So she waddled fatly over and hauled them out easily enough. Then, quite inexplicably, she fell in herself and lay gently oscillating at the bottom of three feet of water. Still more inexplicably, she refused to come to properly when Mr. Boggs and I fished her out after not more than thirty seconds' immersion. Also she looked queerly flattened and misshapen and unnatural. So we ran her into the Little Red Doctor's office and awaited the verdict.
It was a long wait. When at length the Little Red Doctor emerged there was a wild kind of glint in his eye.
“D' you know what's the matter with that old black idiot?” he demanded.
“Martyr to her own hee-roism,” suggested Mr. Boggs, the romantic. “Is she drowned?”
The Little Red Doctor snorted: “She's starved. That's what she is!”
“She's as fat as butter,” I protested.
“Fat like a sliver!” retorted the physician scornfully. “Padded!”
“What on earth should she pad for?” I cried.
“To fool her mistress. She's been going without food so as to buy more for madam.”
At this information the eyes of the Destroying Angel bade fair to pop from their sockets and injure the Little Red Doctor toward whom they were violently protruding. “D' ye meantersay they're poor?” he gasped.