She leaned farther out over the bank.  “Why, there, goosie!” she whispered.  “Right there.”

“I can’t see it.”

She leaned still farther, bending down to point.  “Why right th—­”

At this moment she removed her hand from his shoulder, though unwillingly.  She clutched at him, in fact, but without avail.  She had been too amiable.

A loud shriek was uttered by throats abler to vocalize, just then, than Milla’s, for in her great surprise she said nothing whatever—­the shriek came from the other girls as Milla left the crest of the overhanging bank and almost horizontally disappeared into the brown water.  There was a tumultuous splash, and then of Milla Rust and her well-known beautifulness there was nothing visible in the superficial world, nor upon the surface of that creek.  The vanishment was total.

“Save her!”

Several girls afterward admitted having used this expression, and little Miss Floy Williams, the youngest and smallest member of the class, was unable to deny that she had said, “Oh, God!” Nothing could have been more natural, and the matter need not have been brought before her with such insistence and frequency, during the two remaining years of her undergraduate career.

Ramsey was one of those who heard this exclamation, later so famous, and perhaps it was what roused him to heroism.  He dived from the bank, headlong, and the strange thought in his mind was “I guess this’ll show Dora Yocum!” He should have been thinking of Milla, of course, at such a time, particularly after the little enchantment just laid upon him by Milla’s touch and Milla’s curls; and he knew well enough that Miss Yocum was not among the spectators.  She was half a mile away, as it happened, gathering “botanical specimens” with one of the teachers—­which was her idea of what to do at a picnic!

Ramsey struck the water hard, and in the same instant struck something harder.  Wesley Bender’s bundle of books had given him no such shock as he received now, and if the creek bottom had not been of mud, just there, the top of his young head might have declined the strain.  Half stunned, choking, spluttering he somehow floundered to his feet; and when he could get his eyes a little cleared of water he found himself wavering face to face with a blurred vision of Milla Rust.  She had risen up out of the pod and stood knee deep, like a lovely drenched figure in a fountain.

Upon the bank above them, Willis Parker was jumping up and down, gesticulating and shouting fiercely.  “Now I guess you’re satisfied our fishin’ is spoilt!  Whyn’t you listen me?  I told you it wasn’t more’n three feet deep!  I and Heinie waded all over this creek gettin’ our bait.  You’re a pretty sight!”