“There, there, Midget, come off!  I didn’t do anything much; Molly here did the most, but, thank goodness, we all got out alive!  Now what shall we do next?”

Kitty had recovered entirely from her dazed and stunned feeling, and was again her practical and helpful self.

“We must run,” she said, “we must run like sixty!  That’s the only way to keep from catching cold in these wet clothes!”

“Can’t we build a fire, and dry ourselves?” asked Molly, who was shivering with cold.

“No, of course not,” said Kitty, “for we haven’t any matches, and if we had they’d be soaked.  No, we must run as hard as we can tear along this bank until we get opposite Grandma’s house, and then they’ll have to come over and get us somehow.”

“How’ll they know we’re there?” asked Molly.

“I’ll yell,” said Marjorie, quite confident of her powers in this direction.  “I’ll yell,—­and I just know I can make Carter hear me!”

“I’ll bet you can!” said King.  “Come on then, let’s run.  Take hold of hands.”

With King and Midget at either end of the line, and the other two between, they ran!

CHAPTER IX

ANCIENT FINERY

When the children reached the big open field that was just across the river from Grandma Sherwood’s, although their clothes had ceased dripping, they were far from dry, and they all shivered in the keen morning air.

“Yell away, Mopsy,” cried King.  “You can make Carter hear if anybody can.”

So Marjorie yelled her very best ear-splitting shrieks.

“Car-ter!  Car-ter!” she screamed, and the others gazed at her in admiration.

“Well, you can yell!” said Molly.  “I expect my people will hear that!”

After two or three more screams, they saw Carter come running down toward the boathouse.  Looking across the river, he saw the four children frantically waving their hands and beckoning to him.

“For the land’s sake!  What is going on now?” he muttered, hurrying down to the bank as fast as his rheumatic old legs would carry him.

“And the boat’s gone!” he exclaimed; “now, however did them children get over there without no boat?  By the looks of their wet clothes they must have swum over, but I don’t believe they could do that.  Hey, there!” he shouted, making a megaphone of his hands.

“Come over and get us,” Marjorie yelled back, and beginning to realize the situation, Carter went into the boathouse and began to take out the other boat.  This was an old flat-bottomed affair, which had been unused since Uncle Steve bought the new boat.

“Most prob’ly she leaks like a sieve,” he muttered, as he untied the boat and pushed it out; “but I’ve nothing else to bring the young rascals home in.  So they’ll have to bail while I row.”

Carter was soon in the old boat, and pulling it across the river.  As he had expected, it leaked badly, but he was sure he could get the children home in it.