She listened with all her ears for an answer. A bird squeaked shrilly on the other side of the field; there was no other sound. Wiggins'

white face was now bluish round the mouth; and his eyes were full of fear. Again she kicked about for a grip, in vain.

"It's d-d-dreadfully c-c-cold," said Wiggins in a very faint voice; he began to sob; and his eyes looked very dully into hers.

She knew that it was dreadfully cold; her drenched arms and chest were dreadfully cold; and he was in that icy water to his shoulders.

"Try to stick it out! Don't give in! It's only a minute or two longer! The Terror _must_ come!" she cried fiercely.

His eyes gazed at her piteously; and she began to sob without feeling ashamed of it. Then his eyes filled with that dreadful look of hopeless bewildered distress of a very sick child; and they rolled in their sockets scanning the cold sky in desperate appeal.

They terrified Erebus beyond words. She screamed, and then she screamed and screamed. Wiggins' face was a mere white blur through her blinding tears of terror.

She knew nothing till her ankles were firmly gripped; and the Terror cried loudly: "Stop that row!"

She felt him tug at her ankles but not nearly strongly enough to stir her and Wiggins. He, too, could get no hold on the ice with his toes.

Then he cried: "Squirm round to the left. I'll help you."

He made his meaning clearer by tugging her ankles toward the left; and she squirmed in that direction as fast as she dared over the bending ice.

In less than half a minute the Terror got his feet among the roots of a willow, gripped them with his toes, and with a strong and steady pull began to draw them toward the bank. The ice creaked as Wiggins' chest came over the edge of the hole; but it did not break; and his body once flat on the ice, the Terror hauled them to the side of the pond easily.

He dragged Erebus, still by the ankles, half up the bank to get most of her weight off the ice. Then he stepped down on to it and picked up Wiggins. Erebus' stiff fingers still grasped his wrists; and they did not open easily to let them go.

The Terror took one look at the deathly faintly-breathing Wiggins; then he pulled off his woolen gloves, drew his knife from his pocket, opened the blade with his teeth for quickness' sake, tossed it to Erebus and cried: "Cut off his skates! Pull off his boots and stockings!"

Then with swift deft fingers he stripped off Wiggins' coat, jersey and waistcoat, pulled on his gloves, caught up a handful of snow and began to rub his chest violently. In the spring the Twins had attended a course of the St. John's Ambulance Society lectures, and among other things had learned how to treat those dying from exposure. The Terror was the quicker dealing with Wiggins since he had so often been the subject on which he and Erebus had practised many kinds of first-aid.

He rubbed hard till the skin reddened with the blood flowing back into it. Erebus with feeble fumbling fingers (she was almost spent with cold and terror) cut the straps of his skates and the laces of his boots, pulled them off, pulled off his stockings, and rubbed feebly at his legs. The Terror turned Wiggins over and rubbed his back violently till the blood reddened that. Wiggins uttered a little gasping grunt.

Forthwith the Terror pulled off his own coat and jersey and put them on Wiggins; then he pulled off Wiggins' knickerbockers and rubbed his thighs till they reddened; then he pulled off his stockings and pulled them on Wiggins' legs. The stockings came well up his thighs; and the Terror's coat and jersey came well down them. Wiggins was completely covered. But the Terror was not satisfied; he called on Erebus for her stockings and pulled them on Wiggins over his own; then he took her jacket and tied it round Wiggins' waist by the sleeves.

Wiggins was much less blue; and the whiteness of his cheeks was no longer a dead waxen color. He opened his eyes twice and shut them feebly.

The Terror shook him, and shouted: "Come on, old chap! Make an effort!

We want to get you home!"

With that he raised him on to his feet, put his own cap well over Wiggins' cold wet head, slipped an arm round him under his shoulder, bade Erebus support him in like manner on the other side; and they set off toward the village half carrying, half dragging him along. They went slowly for Wiggins' feet dragged feebly and almost helplessly along. Their arms round him helped warm him. It would have taken them a long time to haul him all the way to his home; but fortunately soon after they came out of Pringle's meadows on to the road, Jakes, the Great Deeping butcher, who supplies also Little Deeping and Muttle Deeping with meat, came clattering along in his cart. Wiggins was quickly hauled into it; and the three of them were at Mr. Carrington's in about four minutes.

As they hauled Wiggins along the garden path, the Terror, said to Erebus: "You bolt home as hard as you can go. You must be awfully wet and cold; and if you don't want to be laid up, the sooner you take some quinine and get to bed the better."

As soon therefore as she had helped Wiggins over the threshold she ran home as quickly as her legs, still stiff and cold, would carry her.

The arrival of the barelegged Terror in his waistcoat, bearing Wiggins as a half-animate bundle, set Mr. Carrington's house in an uproar. The Terror, as the expert in first-aid, took command of the cook and housemaid and Mr. Carrington himself. Wiggins was carried into the hot kitchen and rolled in a blanket with a hot water bottle at his feet.

The cook was for two blankets and two hot water bottles; but the expert Terror insisted with a firmness there was no bending that heat must be restored slowly. As Wiggins warmed he gave him warm brandy and water with a teaspoon. In ten minutes Wiggins was quite animate, able to talk faintly, trying not to cry with the pain of returning circulation.

The Terror sent the cook and housemaid to get the sheets off his bed and warm the blankets. In another five minute's Mr. Carrington carried Wiggins up to it, and gave him a dose of ammoniated quinine. Presently he fell asleep.

The Terror had taken his coat off Wiggins; but he was still without stockings and a jersey. He borrowed stockings and a sweater from Mr.

Carrington, and now that the business of seeing after Wiggins was over, he told him how he had come to the pond to find Wiggins in the water and Erebus spread out on the ice, holding him back from sinking. He was careful not to tell him that he had forbidden Erebus to let Wiggins go on the ice; and when Mr. Carrington began to thank him for saving him, he insisted on giving all the credit to Erebus.

Mr. Carrington made him also take a dose of ammoniated quinine, and then further fortified him with cake and very agreeable port wine. On his way home the Terror went briskly round by Pringle's pond and picked up the skates and garments that had been left there. When he reached home he found that Erebus was in bed. She seemed little the worse for lying with her arms and chest in that icy water, keeping Wiggins afloat; and when she learned that Wiggins also seemed none the worse and was sleeping peacefully, she ate her lunch with a fair appet.i.te.

The Terror did not point out that all the trouble had sprung from her disregard for his instructions; he only said: "I just told Mr.

Carrington that Wiggins was already in the water when I got to the pond."

"That was awfully decent of you," said Erebus after a pause in which she had gathered the full bearing of his reticence.

CHAPTER VIII

AND THE MUTTLE DEEPING PEACHES

The dreadful fright she had suffered did not throw a cloud over the spirit of Erebus for as long as might have been expected. She was as quick as any one to realize that all's well that ends well; and Wiggins escaped lightly, with a couple of days in bed. The adventure, however, induced a change in her att.i.tude to him; she was far less condescending with him than she had been; indeed she seemed to have acquired something of a proprietary interest in him and was uncommonly solicitous for his welfare. To such a point did this solicitude go that more than once he remonstrated bitterly with her for fussing about him.

During the rest of the winter, the spring and the early summer, their lives followed an even tenor: they did their lessons; they played their games; then tended the inmates of the cats' home, selling them as they grew big, and replacing the sold with threepenny kittens just able to lap.

In the spring they fished the free water of the Whittle, the little trout-stream that runs through the estate of the Morgans of Muttle Deeping Grange. The free water runs for rather more than half a mile on the Little Deeping side of Muttle Deeping; and the Twins fished it with an a.s.siduity and a skill which set the villagers grumbling that they left no fish for any one else. Also the Twins tried to get leave to fish Sir James Morgan's preserved water, higher up the stream. But Mr. Hilton, the agent of the estate, was very firm in his refusal to give them leave: for no reason that the Twins could see, since Sir James was absent, shooting big game in Africa. They resented the refusal bitterly; it seemed to them a wanton waste of the stream. It was some consolation to them to make a well-judged raid one early morning on the strawberry-beds in one of the walled gardens of Muttle Deeping Grange.

About the middle of June the Terror went to London on a visit to their Aunt Amelia. Sir Maurice Falconer and Miss Hendersyde saw to it that it was not the unbroken series of visits to cats' homes Lady Ryehampton had arranged for him; and he enjoyed it very much. On his return he was able to a.s.sure the interested Erebus that their aunt's parrot still said "dam" with a perfectly accurate, but monotonous iteration.

Soon after his return the news was spread abroad that Sir James Morgan had let Muttle Deeping Grange. In the life of the Deeping villages the mere letting of Muttle Deeping Grange was no unimportant event, but the inhabitants of Great Deeping, Muttle Deeping (possibly a corruption of Middle Deeping), and Little Deeping were stirred to the very depths of their being when the news came that it had been let to a German princess. The women, at any rate, awaited her coming with the liveliest interest and curiosity, emotions dashed some way from their fine height when they learned that Princess Elizabeth, of Ca.s.sel-Na.s.sau, was only twelve years and seven months old.

The Twins did not share the excited curiosity of their neighbors.

Resenting deeply the fact that the tenant of Muttle Deeping was a _German_ princess, they a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of cold aloofness in the matter, and refused to be interested or impressed. Erebus was more resentful than the Terror; and it is to be suspected that the high patriotic spirit she displayed in the matter was in some degree owing to the fact that Mrs. Blenkinsop, who came one afternoon to tea, gushing information about the grandfathers, grandmothers, parents, uncles, cousins and aunts of the princess, ended by saying, with meaning, "And what a model she will be to the little girls of the neighborhood!"

Erebus told the Terror that things were indeed come to a pretty pa.s.s when it was suggested to an English girl, a Dangerfield, too, that she should model herself on a German.

"I don't suppose it would really make any difference who you modeled yourself on," said the Terror, desirous rather of being frank than grammatical.

When presently the princess came to the Grange, the lively curiosity of her neighbors was gratified by but imperfect visions of her. She did not, as they had expected, attend any of the three churches, for she had brought with her her own Lutheran pastor. They only saw her on her afternoon drives, a stiff little figure, thickly veiled against the sun, sitting bolt upright in the victoria beside the crimson baroness (crimson in face; she wore black) in whose charge she had come to England.

They learned presently that the princess had come to Muttle Deeping for her health; that she was delicate and her doctors feared lest she should develop consumption; they hoped that a few weeks in the excellent Deeping air would strengthen her. The news abated a little the cold hostility of Erebus; but the Twins paid but little attention to their young neighbor.

Their mother was finding the summer trying; she was sleeping badly, and her appet.i.te was poor. Doctor Arbuthnot put her on a light diet; and in particular he ordered her to eat plenty of fruit. It was not the best season for fruit: strawberries were over and raspberries were coming to an end. Mrs. Dangerfield made shift to do with bananas. The Twins were annoyed that this was the best that could be done to carry out the doctor's orders; but there seemed no help for it.

It was in the afternoon, a sweltering afternoon, after the doctor's visit that, as the Twins, bent on an aimless ride, were lazily wheeling their bicycles out of the cats' home, a sudden gleam came into the eyes of the Terror; and he said:

"I've got an idea!"

An answering light gleamed in the eyes of Erebus; and she cried joyfully; "Thank goodness! I was beginning to get afraid that nothing was ever going to occur to us again. I thought it was the hot weather.

What is it?"

"Those Germans," said the Terror darkly. "Now that they've got the Grange, why shouldn't we make a raid on the peach-garden. They say the Grange peaches are better than any hothouse ones; and Watkins told me they ripen uncommon early. They're probably ripe now."

"That's a splendid idea! It will just teach those Germans!" cried Erebus; and her piquant face was bright with the sterling spirit of the patriot. Then after a pause she added reluctantly: "But if the princess is an invalid, perhaps she ought to have all the peaches herself."

"She couldn't want all of them. Why we couldn't. There are hundreds,"