“Now, don’t you wish you were fat?” jeered Margery.  “If you had been, they couldn’t have lifted you and you wouldn’t have fallen in again.”

“Fat like you?  Never!  I’d die firtht,” replied Tommy.  “But I may ath it ith.  I’m freething, Mith Elting.”

“Get up and go ashore.  Hazel, will you please see that Grace doesn’t sit down on the cold ground?”

Hazel Holland led the protesting Tommy along the pier to the shore, where she walked the little girl up and down as fast as she could be induced to move, which, after all, was not much faster than an ordinarily slow walk.  The others of the party remained out at the end, walking back and forth and waiting until the coming of the dawn, so that they might see to that for which they had planned by daylight.

At the first suggestion of dawn, Harriet plunged into the pond without a word of warning to her companions and began gathering up and pushing bundles of equipment toward the shore.  Jane and Hazel were not far behind her.  Then Miss Elting, not to be outdone by her charges, plunged in after them.  Margery, shivering, turned her back on them and walked shoreward.

“’Fraid cat! ’fraid cat!” taunted Tommy, when she saw Margery coming.

“I’m no more afraid than you are.  You’re afraid to go into the water.  The only way you can go in is to fall in or be pushed!”

“Am I?  Ith that tho?  Well, I’ll thhow you whether I am afraid of the water.  I dare you to follow me.”  Tommy fairly flew down the pier; then, leaping up into the air, jumped far out, taking a clean feet-first dive into the pond, uttering a shrill little yell just before disappearing under the surface.  But all at once she stood up, and, by raising her chin a little, was able to keep her head above water.

“Hello there, Tommy, what are you standing on?” called Harriet, puffing and blowing as she pushed a canvas-bound pack along ahead of her.

“I don’t know.  I gueth it mutht be the automobile top.  It ith nithe and thpringy.”

“Please stay there until I get back.  I wish to look it over.  If you can, I wish you would find the rear end of the car, so I may locate it exactly.”

“What have you in mind, darlin’?” asked Jane, with a quick glance at Harriet.

“I’m going to try to get our clothes.  The trunk is strapped and buckled to the rear end, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me just how those buckles are placed; whether there is also a loop through which the strap has been run, and all about it.”

“How should I know?”

“You put the trunk on, didn’t you?”

“Surely, but I can’t remember all those things, even if I ever knew them.”

“Jane, you should learn to observe more closely.  Most persons are careless about that.”  Harriet began swimming toward the shore with Jane.

“Thay!  How long mutht I thtand here in the wet up to my prethiouth neck?” demanded Grace Thompson.  Her feet seemed to be very light.  They persisted in either rising or drifting away from the submerged automobile top.  Tommy kept her hands moving slowly to assist in maintaining her equilibrium.