Years and years before the people living in the neighborhood had put these flat-top boulders into the creek-bed, because the light wooden bridges were forever being carried away by the floods. Of course that was before the day of the railroad.
Tavia started across the stones, and Dorothy followed her. One after the other they got over safely. But Ned Ebony’s shoe came untied and she was last.
Perhaps she was careless; perhaps she tripped on her shoelace; perhaps she was heedless enough to step on the edge of a certain small boulder that Tavia warned her was not exactly steady.
However it was, the boulder rolled, poor Edna “sprawled” in the air for a moment to get her balance, and then the rock turned over and she went “splash!” into the water.
“To the rescue!” shrieked Tavia, charging back to the stepping stones. “Forward, my bold hearties! Man overboard! Who’s got a rope?”
Then she lost the power of speech in a burst of laughter; for certain it was, poor Ned Ebony was an awfully funny sight!
But Dorothy was at hand to do something practical. She sprang back upon the nearest boulder to the one that had turned under her unfortunate schoolmate, and in half a minute she had dragged Edna out of the cold water.
“Oh! _oh!_ OH!” sputtered Edna in _crescendo_. “I--I’m drowned--dead! Oh, do help me out! You mean thing, Tavia! Oh, I’m frozen!”
The water was ice cold, and the temperature of the air was close to the freezing point. This adventure might easily become serious, and Dorothy knew it.
“We must hurry her to the Belding station,” she cried. “Come on, Neddie! You must run.”
“Run? I can’t. See how water-soaked my skirt is. I _can’t_ run.”
“You must!” declared Dorothy. “Come, Tavia--take her other hand. Have you her bag, Cologne? We’ll run ahead with her and see if we can find somebody to take her in. She must be dried and have other clothing. Oh, hurry!”
“I can’t run, Doro Dale! I tell you I can’t,” wailed the saturated girl.
But they made her hurry, and in fifteen minutes had her in the sitting room belonging to the station agent’s wife, where she was helped to disrobe, dried, dosed with hot tea, and finally managed to dress herself in dry garments borrowed from the bags of her schoolmates, the contents of her own bag being wet, too.