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to bless the unseen influence, or the bootlaces, or whatever it was.
Denny had got to the middle of the pool, and he was splashing about and getting his clothes very wet indeed, and altogether you would have thought his was a most envious and happy state. But alas! the brightest cloud has a waterproof lining. He was just saying:
"You are a silly, Oswald. You'd much better—" when he gave a blood-piercing scream, and began to kick about.
"What's up?" cried the ready Oswald; he feared the worst from the way Denny screamed, but he knew it could not be an old meat tin in this quiet and jungular spot, like it was in the moat when the shark bit Dora.
"I don't know, it's biting me. Oh, it's biting me all over my legs! Oh, what shall I do? Oh, it does hurt! Oh! oh! oh!" remarked Denny, among his screams, and he splashed towards the bank. Oswald went into the water and caught hold of him and helped him out. It is true that Oswald had his boots on, but I trust he would not have funked the unknown terrors of the deep, even without his boots. I am almost sure he would not have.
When Denny had scrambled and been hauled ashore, we saw with horror and amaze that his legs were stuck all over with large black slug-looking things. Denny turned green in the face—and even Oswald felt a bit queer, for he knew in a moment what the black dreadfulnesses were. He had read about them in a book called Magnet Stories, where there was a girl called Theodosia, and she could play brilliant trebles on the piano in duets, but the other girl knew all about leeches, which is much more useful and golden deedy. Oswald tried to pull the leeches off, but they wouldn't, and Denny howled so he had to stop trying. He remembered from the Magnet Stories how to make the leeches begin biting—the girl did it with cream—but he could not remember how to stop them, and they had not wanted any showing how to begin.
"Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do? Oh, it does hurt! Oh, oh!" Denny observed, and Oswald said:
"Be a man! Buck up! If you won't let me take them off you'll just have to walk home in them."
At this thought the unfortunate youth's tears fell fast. But Oswald gave him an arm, and carried his boots for him, and he consented to buck up, and the two struggled on towards the others, who were coming back, attracted by Denny's yells. He did not stop howling for a moment, except to breathe. No one ought to blame him till they have had eleven leeches on their right leg and six on their left, making seventeen in all, as Dicky said, at once.
It was lucky he did yell, as it turned out, because a man on the road—where the telegraph wires were—was interested by his howls, and came across the marsh to us as hard as he could.
When he saw Denny's legs he said:
"Blest if I didn't think so," and he picked Denny up and carried him under one arm, where Denny went on saying "Oh!" and "It does hurt" as hard as ever.
Our rescuer, who proved to be a fine big young man in the bloom of youth, and a farm-laborer by trade, in corduroys, carried the wretched sufferer to the cottage where he lived with his aged mother; and then Oswald found that what he had forgotten about the leeches was salt. The young man in the bloom of youth's mother put salt on the leeches, and they squirmed off, and fell with sickening, slug-like flops on the brick floor.
Then the young man in corduroys and the bloom, etc., carried Denny home on his back, after his legs had been bandaged up, so that he looked like "wounded warriors returning."
It was not far by the road, though such a long distance by the way the young explorers had come.
He was a good young man, and though, of course, acts of goodness are their own reward, still I was glad he had the two half-crowns Albert's uncle gave him, as well as his own good act. But I am not sure Alice ought to have put him in the Golden Deed book which was supposed to be reserved for Us.
Perhaps you will think this was the end of the source of the Nile (or north pole). If you do, it only shows how mistaken the gentlest reader may be.
The wounded explorer was lying with his wounds and bandages on the sofa, and we were all having our tea, with raspberries and white currants, which we richly needed after our torrid adventures, when Mrs. Pettigrew, the housekeeper, put her head in at the door and said:
"Please could I speak to you half a moment, sir," to Albert's uncle. And her voice was the kind that makes you look at each other when the grown-up has gone out, and you are silent, with your bread-and-butter half way to the next bite, or your teacup in mid flight to your lips.
It was as we supposed. Albert's uncle did not come back for a long while. We did not keep the bread-and-butter on the wing all that time, of course, and we thought we might as well finish the raspberries and white currants. We kept some for Albert's uncle, of course, and they were the best ones too; but when he came back he did not notice our thoughtful unselfishness.
He came in, and his face wore the look that means bed, and very likely no supper.
He spoke, and it was the calmness of white-hot iron, which is something like the calmness of despair. He said:
"You have done it again. What on earth possessed you to make a dam?"
"We were being beavers," said H. O., in proud tones. He did not see as we did where Albert's uncle's tone pointed to.
"No doubt," said Albert's uncle, rubbing his hands through his hair. "No doubt! no doubt! Well, my beavers, you may go and build dams with your bolsters. Your dam stopped the stream; the clay you took for it left a channel through which it has run down and ruined about seven pounds' worth of freshly reaped barley. Luckily the farmer found it out in time or you might have spoiled seventy pounds' worth. And you burned a bridge yesterday."
We said we were sorry. There was nothing else to say, only Alice added, "We didn't mean to be naughty."
"Of course not," said Albert's uncle, "you never do. Oh, yes, I'll kiss you—but it's bed and it's two hundred lines to-morrow, and the line is—'Beware of Being Beavers and Burning Bridges. Dread Dams.' It will be a capital exercise in capital B's and D's."
We knew by that that, though annoyed, he was not furious; we went to bed.
I got jolly sick of capital B's and D's before sunset on the morrow. That night, just as the others were falling asleep, Oswald said:
"I say."
"Well," retorted his brother.
"There is one thing about it," Oswald went on, "it does show it was a rattling good dam anyhow."
And filled with this agreeable thought, the weary beavers (or explorers, polar or otherwise) fell asleep.
The High-Born Babe
It really was not such a bad baby—for a baby. Its face was round and quite clean, which babies' faces are not always, as I dare say you know by your own youthful relatives; and Dora said its cape was trimmed with real lace, whatever that may be—I don't see myself how one kind of lace can be realler than another. It was in a very swagger sort of perambulator when we saw it; and the perambulator was standing quite by itself in the lane that leads to the mill.
"I wonder whose baby it is," Dora said. "Isn't it a darling, Alice?"
Alice agreed to its being one, and said she thought it was most likely the child of noble parents stolen by gipsies.
"These two, as likely as not," Noël said. "Can't you see something crime-like in the very way they're lying?"
They were two tramps, and they were lying on the grass at the edge of the lane on the shady side, fast asleep, only a very little further on than where the Baby was. They were very ragged, and their snores did have a sinister sound.
"I expect they stole the titled heir at dead of night, and they've been travelling hot-foot ever since, so now they're sleeping the sleep of exhaustedness," Alice said. "What a heartrending scene when the patrician