Now Mollie as a girl had always been a very good jumper, so she resolved at once to try the leap, and have the report of her valiant deed carried back to Mr. John.  She joined the boys, and seeing that one after another went down safely, she soon asked for a turn.  She was gravely remonstrated with.  She was overwhelmed with sage masculine advice, but she swept her way clear and jumped—­with all the recklessness of her reckless mood.  She knew well enough the backward inclination proper for her head, what the relative positions of her knees and chin should be, and if she had taken the least forethought might have redeemed the declining reputation of her boyhood.  The knowledge flashed across her in her swift descent that her spine had not preserved the proper perpendicular, and that she was coming down wrong.  Chin and knees knocked together as she fell in a heap on the grass below.

[Illustration:  MOLLIE IS CARED FOR BY THE BOYS.]

It was a caving in of skull, she thought, that made that horrible crashing pain and that sent lightning dancing on a black background before her eyes, then blinded her quite.  Nothing but a general chaos of skull and brain could make such terrible pain.  She wondered if her friends would be able to recognize one dear lineament in the jumble of her features.  She thought what a sad fate it was to die young.  She wondered how Mr. John would feel now! and then she found that light dawned upon her and that she had an eye open.  In a moment she discovered that the sense of hearing, too, had not abandoned her; for the boys had reached her by this time, and she heard Mr. John’s nephew, John, saying: 

“She’s knocked her teeth through her lip, that’s all.  I did it once when I jumped wrong and hit my chin on my knee.  She’ll soon be all right.”

Two eyes open now, and she saw a bloody frock, and what seemed an army of boys; for there was something still the matter with her vision which caused it to multiply.

“Boys, boys, nothing but boys!” thought Mollie, dropping her lids.  “Where did they all come from, I wonder?  There must be a thousand.  I never want to see another.  I wouldn’t be one for the world.  I wish they’d go away.”

Then she felt some one bathing her face gently, and when the water had refreshed her, she ventured another peep at the world.  Boys around her still; but she could see now that their number was only four, and the faces those of friends.

“Cheer up, Mollie,” said John, jr.  “You got a hard knock, but you’re coming on.  Bob’s gone for the phaeton, and we’ll have you home in no time.”

They propped her up against a tree, and continued to bathe her head with water from Jerry’s felt hat, filled at the little brook close by.

All this while Mr. John had been accounting for their absence by supposing that Mollie was taking some sort of revenge on him, and he would permit none of the girls to go in search of the wanderers.  Not until Bob and the phaeton appeared did news of Mollie’s valiant deed reach him.  Then he went to her at once, and saw her pale and bloody.