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Page 27
"Merciful powers!" he exclaimed. "Whatever has become of them two
witches?"
"Where can they be?" cried Stella, clasping her hands, and opening
her eyes wide in alarm.
Old Carter was genuinely frightened. "Miss Marjorie!" he called,
loudly. "Miss Molly! Where be ye?"
Meanwhile, the two girls inside the boathouse had carefully
scrambled down into the boat and sat quietly on the stern seat.
There was a strong breeze blowing, and as the boat swayed up and
down on the rippling water, its keel grating against the post to
which it was tied, and the doors and windows being tightly shut,
they did not hear Carter's voice. They really had no intention of
frightening the old man, and supposed he would open the door in a
moment.
But Carter's mind was so filled with the thought that the children
had fallen into the water that it didn't occur to him to open the
boathouse. He went to the edge of the pier, which was a narrow
affair, consisting only of two wooden planks and a single hand
rail, and gazed anxiously down into the water.
This gave Stella a firm conviction that the girls were drowned,
and without another word she began to cry in her own noisy and
tumultuous fashion. Poor Carter, already at his wits' end, had
small patience with any additional worry.
"Keep still, Miss Stella," he commanded; "it's enough to have two
children on me hands drowned without another one raising a
hullabaloo. And it's a queer thing, too, if them wicked little
rats is drownded, why they don't come up to the surface! My stars!
Whatever will the Missus say? But, havin' disappeared so mortal
quick, there's no place they can be but under the water. I'll get
a boat-hook, and perhaps I can save 'em yet."
Trembling with excitement and bewildered with anxiety, so that he
scarcely knew what he did, the old man fitted the key in the lock.
He flung open the boathouse door and faced the two children, who
sat quietly and with smiling faces in the boat.
"Well, if ye don't beat all! Good land, Miss Marjorie, whatever
did ye give me such a scare for? Sure I thought ye was drownded,
and I was jest goin' to fish ye up with a boat-hook! My, but you
two are terrors! And how did ye get in now? Through the keyhole, I
suppose."
"Why, no, Carter," exclaimed Marjorie, who was really surprised at
the old man's evident excitement; "we were in a hurry, and the
door was locked, so we just stepped in through the window."
"Stepped in through the window, is it? And if the window had been
locked ye'd have jest stepped in through the chimley! And if the
chimley had been locked, ye'd have stepped into the water, and
ducked under, and come up through the floor! When ye're in a
hurry, ye stop for nothin', Miss Midget."
The old man's relief at finding the children safe was so great
that he was really talking a string of nonsense to hide his
feelings.
But Stella, though she realized the girls were all right, could
not control her own emotions so easily, and was still crying
vociferously.
"For goodness' sake!" exclaimed Molly, "what IS the matter with
Stella? Doesn't she want to go boating?"
"Why--yes," sobbed Stella, "b-but I thought you two were drowned."
"Well, we're not!" cried Marjorie, gayly. "So cheer up, Stella,
and come along."
Leaving the two girls, as they were already seated, in the stern
of the boat, Carter carefully tucked Stella into the bow seat, and
then took his own place on the middle thwart. This arrangement
enabled him to keep his eye on the two mischievous madcaps, and he
had no fear that Stella would cut up any tricks behind his back.
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