Mabel says George was there almost as soon, calling to Mabel to keep back out of danger.  Usually when people have to rescue others, especially in stories, they call to some one to bring a board, and some one does, and it is easy.  But very often in real life there isn’t any board or any one to bring it, and this was indeed the desperate situation that confronted my hero.  There was nothing to do but plunge in after Kittie, and he plunged, skates and all.  Then Mabel heard him gasp and laugh a little, and he called out:  “It’s all right, by Jove!  The water isn’t much above my knees.”  And even as he spoke Mabel saw Kittie rise in the water and sort of hurl herself at him and pull him down into the water, head and all.  When they came up they were both half strangled, and Mabel was terribly frightened; for she thought George was mistaken about the depth, and they would both drown before her eyes; and then she would see that picture all her life, as they do in stories, and her hair would turn gray.  She began to run up and down on the ice and scream; but even as she did so she heard these extraordinary words come from between Kittie James’s chattering teeth: 

“Now you are good and wet!”

George did not say a word.  He confessed to Mabel afterwards that he thought poor Kittie had lost her mind through fear.  But he tried the ice till he found a place that would hold him, and he got out and pulled Kittie out.  As soon as Kittie was out she opened her mouth and uttered more remarkable words.

“Now,” she said, “I’ll skate till we get near the club-house.  Then you must pick me up and carry me, and I’ll shut my eyes and let my head hang down.  And Mabel must cry—­good and hard.  Then you must send for Josephine and let her see how you’ve saved the life of her precious little sister.”

Mabel said she was sure that Kittie was crazy, and next she thought George was crazy, too.  For he bent and stared hard into Kittie’s eyes for a minute, and then he began to laugh, and he laughed till he cried.  He tried to speak, but he couldn’t at first; and when he did the words came out between his shouts of boyish glee.

“Do you mean to say, you young monkey,” he said, “that this is a put-up job?”

Kittie nodded as solemnly as a fair young girl can nod when her clothes are dripping and her nose is blue with cold.  When she did that, George roared again; then, as if he had remembered something, he caught her hands and began to skate very fast toward the club-house.  He was a thoughtful young man, you see, and he wanted her to get warm.  Perhaps he wanted to get warm, too.  Anyhow, they started off, and as they went, Kittie opened still further the closed flower of her girlish heart.  I heard that expression once, and I’ve always wanted to get it into one of my stories.  I think this is a good place.

She told George she knew the hole in the ice, and that it wasn’t deep; and she said she had done it all to make Josephine admire him and marry him.