“Dear me! I most wish I hadn’t come this way, Josh,” Kate said, putting her feet in daintily and afraid she should get them wet. If there was one thing that Kate Hallock disliked to do more than every other thing, it was to “change her stockings and shoes in the day-time.”
She picked her way with a good deal of care for awhile; the dog following her and looking with evident interest at her over-skirt and hat. And then, finding that the ground was pretty firm and the sun getting very hot, Kate hurried on. She was about half way across the meadow, when she felt herself on marshy ground. The grass was too deep to see, but she was sure that her feet were wet, and ’twas getting harder and harder to walk, with every step.
“Dear me! what shall I do?” she cried. “Josh! Josh! don’t go! Here, Josh!” and every instant, with every step, Kate Hallock was sinking deeper and deeper into the black mud. Finally she could go no further, for she was fast in the horrid swamp, and, worse than all, every effort that she made to get out only served to get her in deeper still.
“I wonder if anybody ever got stuck here before, and what will become of me?” thought poor Kate, adding consolingly to herself the words spoken aloud, “Anyway, they love me well enough at home to find me before I die, even if I am here.”
As soon as Josh understood the condition of affairs, he began to bark as loud as he could, but there was not a soul near to hear, although Kate could see distinctly the windows of her home. He barked until he was hoarse; then he got as near to Kate as he could and looked at her consolingly and determinedly; and then he gave his bushy tail a wag or two and started for home. The very idea of being left there alone without Josh even, was so utterly horrible to the poor little prisoner, shorter, if not smaller than ever, now that she was one-third engulfed, and sinking still, that it seemed unbearable, and she called frantically to Josh to come back and stay with her.
The bewildered dog turned and taking her dress in his teeth, pulled until it gave way, leaving a fragment of the slight muslin in his mouth.
“You can’t, you cannot pull me out,” cried Kate, and then she remembered the story her mother had told her so often about stopping to think what might be done, and she held fast to Josh’s collar while she tried to think what she could do to bring someone to her aid.
“Hold, hold on, Josh!” she said, after a moment. “Now if I only had a pencil and some paper, I might send you home with a note fast to your neck; but I haven’t, and what am I to do? My apron I could spare, but then no one would know by it what’s happened to me. I’ll send my hat. Hold here, Josh”—taking it off and tying it as well as she could, for Josh resisted, on his head.
She then let him go, and the dog bounded across marsh and field for home, springing into Mrs. Dobson’s kitchen just at the moment when, having given Harry Cornwall his dinner, she had taken her chair to eat her own. Kate’s sun hat was still pendant at his neck.
“Why, Josh! you rascal, come here! you naughty dog, you! You’ve run off with Kate’s hat, and left her to go home in the sun.”