g!"

"There, there, Midget, come off! I didn't do anything much; Molly here
did the most, but, thank goodness, we all got out alive! Now what shall
we do next?"

Kitty had recovered entirely from her dazed and stunned feeling, and was
again her practical and helpful self.

"We must run," she said, "we must run like sixty! That's the only way to
keep from catching cold in these wet clothes!"

"Can't we build a fire, and dry ourselves?" asked Molly, who was
shivering with cold.

"No, of course not," said Kitty, "for we haven't any matches, and if we
had they'd be soaked. No, we must run as hard as we can tear along this
bank until we get opposite Grandma's house, and then they'll have to come
over and get us somehow."

"How'll they know we're there?" asked Molly.

"I'll yell," said Marjorie, quite confident of her powers in this
direction. "I'll yell,--and I just _know_ I can make Carter hear me!"

"I'll bet you can!" said King. "Come on then, let's run. Take hold of
hands."

With King and Midget at either end of the line, and the other two
between, they ran!

CHAPTER IX

ANCIENT FINERY

When the children reached the big open field that was just across the
river from Grandma Sherwood's, although their clothes had ceased
dripping, they were far from dry, and they all shivered in the keen
morning air.

"Yell away, Mopsy," cried King. "You can make Carter hear if anybody
can."

So Marjorie yelled her very best ear-splitting shrieks.

"Car-ter! Car-ter!" she screamed, and the others gazed at her in
admiration.

"Well, you _can_ yell!" said Molly. "I expect my people will hear that!"

After two or three more screams, they saw Carter come running down toward
the boathouse. Looking across the river, he saw the four children
frantically waving their hands and beckoning to him.

"For the land's sake! What is going on now?" he muttered, hurrying down
to the bank as fast as his rheumatic old legs would carry him.

"And the boat's gone!" he exclaimed; "now, however did them children get
over there without no boat? By the looks of their wet clothes they must
have swum over, but I don't believe they could do that. Hey, there!" he
shouted, making a megaphone of his hands.

"Come over and get us," Marjorie yelled back, and beginning to realize
the situation, Carter went into the boathouse and began to take out the
other boat. This was an old flat-bottomed affair, which had been unused
since Uncle Steve