The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea | Page 8

had proposed. Margery's teeth began to chatter
again.
"My--my weak heart won't stand any more," she groaned. "Don't ask
me to go into that horrid, cold water again. Please don't!"
"You won't feel the cold once you are in," urged Harriet.
"No. I didn't feel it the other time, did I?"
"What? Go in thwimming," demanded Tommy. "I wouldn't go in that
water again for a dollar and fifty thentth; no, not for a dollar and
theventy-five thentth." Tommy began backing away, as though fearing
the others might insist and assist her in. Suddenly she uttered a scream.

"Thave me!" yelled Tommy.
They saw her lurch backward; her feet left the pier; then came a splash.
Tommy Thompson had gone over backward and taken to the water
head first.
CHAPTER III
HARRIET HAS A NARROW ESCAPE
"Thave me! Oh, thave me!"
Tommy had turned over and righted herself before rising to the surface.
When she did appear she was within a foot or so of the pier. Her little
blonde head popped up from under the water all of a sudden, and in that
instant she opened her mouth in a wail for help. Tommy's companions
were fairly hysterical with merriment. Tommy yelled again, begging
them to "thave" her.
"I'll save ye, darlin'," cried Jane, throwing herself down and fastening a
hand lightly in Tommy's hair, whereat the little girl screamed more
lustily than before. "Lend a hand here, my hearties. The darlin' wants to
be saved. We'll save her, won't we?" Jane shouted in great glee.
"Of course we will," answered Harriet. She leaned over the edge of the
pier, Jane raising the little girl until the latter's shoulders were above
water; Harriet got hold of her dress and worked her hand along until
she had grasped Tommy by the ankles.
"Let go!" yelled Tommy.
She meant for Harriet to release her feet, but instead Jane McCarthy
released her hold on Tommy's shoulders. The next second Tommy
Thompson was standing on her head in the pond with Harriet Burrell
jouncing her up and down, trying to get her out of the water, but taking
more time about it, so it seemed, than was really necessary. Every time
Tommy's head was drawn free of the water she uttered a choking yell.
There was no telling how long the nonsense might have continued, had

not Miss Elting thrust Harriet aside, resulting in Tommy's falling into
the water and having to be rescued again. Tommy was weeping when
finally they dragged her to the pier and wrung the water out of her
clothing.
"Now, don't you wish you were _fat_?" jeered Margery. "If you had
been, they couldn't have lifted you and you wouldn't have fallen in
again."
"Fat like you? Never! I'd die firtht," replied Tommy. "But I may ath it
ith. I'm freething, Mith Elting."
"Get up and go ashore. Hazel, will you please see that Grace doesn't sit
down on the cold ground?"
Hazel Holland led the protesting Tommy along the pier to the shore,
where she walked the little girl up and down as fast as she could be
induced to move, which, after all, was not much faster than an
ordinarily slow walk. The others of the party remained out at the end,
walking back and forth and waiting until the coming of the dawn, so
that they might see to that for which they had planned by daylight.
At the first suggestion of dawn, Harriet plunged into the pond without a
word of warning to her companions and began gathering up and
pushing bundles of equipment toward the shore. Jane and Hazel were
not far behind her. Then Miss Elting, not to be outdone by her charges,
plunged in after them. Margery, shivering, turned her back on them and
walked shoreward.
"'Fraid cat! 'fraid cat!" taunted Tommy, when she saw Margery coming.
"I'm no more afraid than you are. You're afraid to go into the water.
The only way you can go in is to fall in or be pushed!"
"Am I? Ith that tho? Well, I'll thhow you whether I am afraid of the
water. I dare you to follow me." Tommy fairly flew down the pier; then,
leaping up into the air, jumped far out, taking a clean feet-first dive into
the pond, uttering a shrill little yell just before disappearing under the

surface. But all at once she stood up, and, by raising her chin a little,
was able to keep her head above water.
"Hello there, Tommy, what are you standing on?" called Harriet,
puffing and blowing as she pushed a canvas-bound pack along ahead of
her.
"I don't know. I gueth it mutht be the automobile top. It ith nithe and
thpringy."
"Please stay there until I get back. I wish to look it