After awhile the river broadened. She pa.s.sed boathouses that appeared to stand in the water, their roofs bright with flowers; she drifted along a bank where children were playing. They left their games to watch her.

They pointed at her, and Meg lifted herself up that she might be better seen, feeling more than ever like a little river queen. She, the wild, despised Meg, was envied and admired!

Once more the river grew lonely. Presently she thought she heard a distant, drowsy sound; it grew louder; the boat seemed to glide along more quickly. After awhile the sound became a roar, and the boat skimmed along as if it were flying; still the water remained smooth as gla.s.s.

She fancied she heard voices shouting, but the roar of the water filled her ears till it became a boom. She sat up straight and rigid, and as she flashed past she saw with dreadful clearness the word "Danger"

written up in great letters on a post by the riverside. For the first time Meg's heart began to beat. She heard shouts; she turned her head, and again she saw with terrible distinctness the word "Danger" written above the place the boat was making for. The water-line ended there, and she understood the booming was the roar of the river rushing down to a lower level. Her boat would upset and she must drown! Meg shut her eyes. Mr. Standish, the old boarding-house, seemed to rise before her as she speeded along.

Suddenly the boat jerked, struggling like a living creature arrested in full flight.

"Don't move!" shouted a voice; and Meg, quiet as an image, felt the struggling boat slowly turned round; a head showed above the water; a muscular arm, bare to the elbow, a figure clad in white flannels, swimming low and strong, were beside her.

It had been accomplished in one moment's time. The boat was being now pushed in the direction of a bank, on which stood a watching group of young men, clad, like her rescuer, in white flannels and loose, bright-colored jackets. One of these got into the water, and catching the prow of the boat, pulled it in with one vigorous sweep. The keel grazed the bottom of the river; the young men lifted Meg and set her on sh.o.r.e.

"Well, if ever a little girl escaped drowning you have!" said her rescuer, giving himself a shake.

Meg was silent as she realized that she had been saved from drowning in the whirl and foam of roaring water. The young men looked at her with kind, smiling glances--she was surrounded with laughing eyes and gleaming teeth. They plied her with questions of "Who was she?" "What was her name?" "Where did she come from?" "Had she been frightened?"

She explained how she had got into the boat and she had drifted away.

No, she had not been frightened--only when she saw the word "Danger" she had begun to be afraid.

Her rescuers voted that she was a heroine.

The young men moved away a few steps and held a consultation; one, who had an eyegla.s.s stuck in his eye and a pipe in his mouth, came forward.

"Get into the boat, Meg, and we will all row you back. You will point out the place you came from when we approach it."

He handed Meg in, and the young fellows vied with each other to pay her attention. One put a cushion at her back, another a plank to her feet.

"Meg," they vowed, "must be rowed back in triumph."

They stepped into the boat, four took oars. Another sat behind Meg, ropes in hand. Presently they lit their pipes. Meg sat back in state.

How kind they were! They were not cross, as girls mostly were; they did not mock or tease her; they did not say a word of what some of the girls called chaff. She watched with amazement all their pipes going puff, puff, puff. She liked them because they did not talk much. They reminded her of Mr. Standish. When their eyes caught hers they gave her a smile. How strong they were! She watched their muscular arms and hands sweeping the water with their oars, the rhythmic movement of their swaying bodies.

No Greek maiden delivered from peril by a group of demi-G.o.ds ever felt more lost in dreamy wonder and grat.i.tude than did Meg, rowed up the river by her rescuers. Her eyes rested oftenest on the one who had saved her--he seemed to her the most magnificent member of this gallant crew.

He had laughing, twinkling eyes, thick, short, curly hair, silky mustache no bigger than an eyebrow. It occurred to her that she had not thanked him for saving her life. She turned over in her mind what was the proper thing to say. She tried to recollect what persons in story-books said to the saviours of their lives, but she could not remember; she pondered, but the words of grat.i.tude would not come. At last she exclaimed abruptly:

"You saved my life--and--and--I am very much obliged to you."

A peal of laughter taken up by all the group greeted this speech. The laughter was so jovial and good-natured that Meg felt at her ease. It seemed to say: "What nonsense! Don't thank me. It was nothing."

Then they began to question her again: "Was she afraid of meeting her schoolmistress? Would she be scolded?"

Meg admitted the possibility of being scolded. Her rescuers vowed that they would plead for her. They would extract a promise from the schoolmistress not to punish her. Meg must not be scolded; Meg must be welcomed home like the prodigal returning.

"There!" exclaimed Meg dejectedly, pointing to a group of girls and teachers looking up and down the river. She enjoyed the amazement of the spectators as from the bank they watched her triumphant return. With a sweep of the oars the boat came alongside the sh.o.r.e. Miss Reeves stepped forward.

"You must have been frightened, madam, at this young lady's disappearance," said Meg's rescuer, jumping on sh.o.r.e.

Meg allowed herself to be helped out like a princess by the oarsmen.

"We had not long missed the child," replied Miss Reeves. "We were startled when we discovered that the boat was gone. She ought not to have gone alone--it was very thoughtless."

"The boat drifted away with her--it nearly carried her down the weir,"

said the spokesman. "She was very courageous."

Meg felt herself pleaded for, and listened, motionless.

"You saved her life?" said Miss Reeves.

"I was able, by swimming out in time, to turn the boat's head," replied the young man lightly. "She behaved with great pluck."

"I am most grateful, and I shall acquaint her guardians," said Miss Reeves.

"No, no--pray don't!" replied the young man; and his comrades echoed his words. "Only," he added with a merry twinkle, "do not let Miss Meg be scolded! She is so spirited, so courageous--she ought to have a medal for steadiness of nerves."

Miss Reeves hesitated, then she said smiling: "She will not be scolded."

The announcement was received with approbation, the young men shook hands with Meg, and lifting their white caps to Miss Reeves and the schoolgirls, turned away.

Meg watched their figures retreating through the trees; and when they vanished she felt the loneliness creep over her again.

CHAPTER X.

REBELLION.

The second week of the holidays had come. For close upon a fortnight Meg had been alone with Miss Grantley. The self-centered chilliness of the English teacher deepened the solitary child's sense of isolation. Miss Grantley affected her like the embodied quintessence of censure upon all her moods and actions.

This lady always made Meg feel in the wrong. An increased brusqueness of gesture, a more rigid set of the defiant lips, expressed the protest of the wild little soul.

During the first week of her holidays she had a companion in her solitude. It was a battered doll, with rough hair and faded cheeks. It looked deserted. Rosamund Seely, a kind-hearted child, as a parting gift, had offered it to Meg on receiving the present of a beautiful new doll. "Poor Meg, you are going to be left alone. There's a dollie for you," the child had said, in transferring the belated toy; and Meg's desolate soul had been touched by the words.

For a week she had loyally carried the plaything about with her; she had perched it on a branch of the yew tree when she sat on her leafy throne; she had got to feel so lonely that she sometimes talked to it, and felt toward it as toward a companion, bidding her answer when she spoke.

After awhile that constant comrade, sitting opposite to her with its grimy cheeks, its faded and ragged finery, became in its look of abandonment an emblem to Meg of herself. She grew to hate the sight of the doll; but still she would not part with it for the sake of the donor, and she thrust it in a corner of the shelf a.s.signed to her in the dormitory.

The loneliness chilled the marrow of the child's life. The object ever in view, the repellent att.i.tude toward her comrades, the consciousness that her replies were waited for and sometimes admired, had kept up Meg's spirit. It flagged in the length, the languor, the emptiness of those July days. There was nothing to be done but to sit up in the tree, to read, to think, and remember. As the hare seeks its form, so Meg's thoughts returned to the home where she had spent her childhood. She was always seeing that place on the stairs from which she had watched the coming and going of her only friend during those neglected years. Why did he not write to her? Why? Her lonely heart asked itself this question with insistence. He had promised to write to her, he was true, he never told a falsehood. Why did he not write? Then the conviction was borne in upon her that a letter was waiting for her at Mrs. Browne's house. Mr. Standish thought the landlady would forward it, but perhaps the stern white-haired gentleman, who told her she must forget her childhood and every one she had then met, would withhold her address from Mrs. Browne. The conviction haunted Meg. If she could but get to London she would make her way to Mrs. Browne and get that letter. Meg would lie awake, thinking of this, "If she could but get to London." The contemplation was still vague in her mind. It wanted something to condense it into a resolution, and that something came.

One late afternoon Meg sat at tea with Miss Grantley. She was always awkward under this lady's censorious glance. Stretching her hand for the bread and b.u.t.ter she upset her cup of milk on the teacher's dress. Miss Grantley had on her best mauve silk. She was going out to supper with a friend. As she wiped the stain from her draperies she looked icily at Meg.

"Your manners are deplorable, Miss Beecham. I do not wonder that your companions shun you. It must be most painful for young ladies to be a.s.sociated with one who so richly deserves her nickname of the 'savage.'"

"I am not a savage," said Meg shortly.

"Do not answer me. Your untamed nature, which neither religion nor culture has softened, does not possess the very rudiments of civilized society. You shame this establishment. I had meant to take you out this evening."

"I would not have gone," retorted Meg, her eyes brilliant with indignation.

"Impudent little thing! Don't venture to talk to me like that!" and forgetting herself, Miss Grantley rose and gave a slap with the back of her hand on Meg's ear.