Like a benediction, air swept into her tortured lungs. She lay upon her back and let herself float, gasping.
Edina was safe, she knew. It was Paul Martinson who had dealt the merciful blow on the point of Edina’s chin, saving her life and Billie’s. Paul would take care of Edina. Paul liked Edina----
Billie felt hands tugging at her, pulling her up on something that was hard and rough. The pier!
“Were you going to lie there forever and catch your death of cold?”
It was Vi’s voice scolding, and Billie thought no voice had ever sounded so pleasant in her ears.
She was being pulled to her feet now, supported by loving arms, a ring of anxious faces about her. They were all scolding her, but she did not care. It was nice to have someone care whether she was alive or not.
“Edina’s all right. Paul has her. Now we are going to smuggle you both up to the hall and into dry clothes before you die of pneumonia, or something equally uncomfortable. Come along!”
While Paul Martinson ruefully wrung out his sodden clothes, refusing meanwhile to listen to a word of thanks, Billie and the half-dead Edina were hustled to the Hall for a change of raiment.
They approached the house by a circuitous route, carefully avoiding the groups of girls loitering in the school grounds. Entering by Clarice’s immaculate kitchen and leaving a telltale stream of water across it, they hurried up the back stairs and by great good fortune managed to gain the dormitory unobserved.
“Now get out of those dripping clothes and be quick about it,” ordered Laura, then added with a heartless giggle: “Two such drowned puppies I never did see.”
“You needn’t laugh,” retorted Billie, stripping off her wet stockings. “For a second or two, there we were as near being truly drowned as I ever care to be. How about it, Edina?”
The girl turned a stricken face to Billie.
“It was all my fault!” she said, in a low voice. “You tried to save my life and I paid you back by doin’ my best to drown us both! Seems I’ll never get over bein’ ashamed o’ myself.”
It was a full ten minutes before the combined efforts of the girls reassured Edina to the extent of persuading her to exchange her dripping outfit for a dry one.
“Tell me what you want to wear and I’ll sneak down the back stairs and get it,” offered Laura. “In your present low mood,” she added, with a chuckle, “I’d be afraid to leave you alone. You might hang yourself to the nearest convenient chandelier.”