Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/148

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entered the weed growth, he heard the running water. Helen heard, too, and screamed, "No, no, Te'-boy, not to dits! Mamma say 'No, no!'*' she fairly shrieked, as Ted fell flat on his stom- ach and reached both hands and arms into the water.

"Te'-boy's baff!" he shouted, and tumbled over the edge of the ditch as gleefully as ever in the white bath tub at home. Helen kept her grip on the little dress and was jerked in, too. The first ducking in the cold water fright- ened them both, but Helen, with a strength born of necessity, got to her feet first, still holding Ted. Both chil- dren were crying hard, Teddy de- manding between kicks, "'Et me do, 'et Te*-boy do," and Helen, between shrieks of pain and misery as the stout little legs bruised her and the angry boy tore her hair, sobbed, "Te'-boy, be nice boy, pappa-daddy tum det oo."

Ted's weight and kicks had almost exhausted the little girl, and he was gradually slipping back into the water, when the only other sound of the morn- ing besides their own voices broke the stillness.

"Whoa," and a plump, brown-eyed young woman, hearing the noises in the water beyond the tall weeds, left her carriage and pushed her way to the ditch.

Helen, beaten, had just loosened her hold on the little boy, and together they fell back into the water.

"God in heaven!" breathed the wo- man, as she leaped into the water and gripped a child in each hand. Both were unconscious.

"Stand still, Ned," was all she said, as, with set, anxious face, her strong arms flung the two little ones on their stomachs onto the back of her horse.

Dr. Edna Davis had brought them both into the world and attended them through every baby ailment. She worked over them now as though they were her very own. She rolled them over Ned's warm body and patted and shook them till they sighed and breath- ed again. Wrapping Helen in her light laprobe, she took off her waist, the only dry garment she had left, and buttoned


it around Ted, who seemed to recover better than his sister. Ted began to whimper, though he and the pretty doctor were bosom friends. '*Me not peel dood ; me rike my Mamma." But Helen sobbed weakly, "Mamma — not — tus — me — no mo'. "

"There, there, Helen, don't cry any more. Doctor'll take you and Teddy- boy right straight to Mamma. Come, Ned, run now, and take the babies to Mamma and Papa-daddy."

The reaction soon came to the little boy and he fell asleep on the doctor's arm, but Helen cried all the way, "Mamma not tus He'n no mo'."



Helen has conquered her shyness, but Ted is cross and disgusted.

But when the little cottage was safe- ly reached, and the fears of a distracted mother set at rest; and when Te'-boy and He'n were tucked snugly in their little white beds, and the little lad, wearied with the events of the day, was sound asleep, then Mamma Grace and Helen had a heart-to-heart talk, such as only mothers and daughters know. And it was a radiantly happy little girl, fully reassured of her place in the mother's love and trust, tnat joined the "itty huvver" in the land of dr^ms.