t,
holding each other by the hand, and looking into each other's eyes;
the arbor opened out on to a piece of green grass, with flowers of
mixed colors on the edges of it, and at the back of this bit of lawn
was a lot of clothes hung out on clothes-lines. Of course, I could not
have seen all those things at once, but they came upon me like a single
picture, for in one tick of a watch I went over that flagstone path and
into that front door and through that house and out of that back door,
and past that young man and that young woman, and head and heels both
foremost at once, dashed slam-bang into the midst of all that linen
hanging out on the lines.

[Illustration: "AT LAST I DID GET ON MY FEET"]

I heard the minglement of a groan and a scream, and in an instant I was
enveloped in a white, wet cloud of sheets, pillowcases, tablecloths,
and underwear. Some of the things stuck so close to me, and others I
grabbed with such a wild clutch, that nearly all the week's wash, lines
and all, came down on me, wrapping me up like an apple in a
dumpling--but I stopped. There was not anything in this world that
would have been better for me to run into than those lines full of wet
clothes.

Where the tricycle went to I didn't know, but I was lying on the grass
kicking, and trying to get up and to get my head free, so that I could
see and breathe. At last I did get on my feet, and throwing out my arms
so as to shake off the sheets and pillowcases that were clinging all
over me I shook some of the things partly off my face, and with one
eye I saw that couple on the bench, but only for a second. With a yell
of horror, and with a face whiter than the linen I was wrapped in, that
young man bounced from the bench, dashed past the house, made one clean
jump over the hedge into the road, and disappeared. As for the young
woman, she just flopped over and went down in a faint on the floor.

As soon as I could do it I got myself free from the clothes-line and
staggered out on the grass. I was trembling so much I could scarcely
walk, but when I saw that young woman looking as if she was dead on the
ground I felt I must do something, and seeing a pail of water standing
near by, I held it over her face and poured it down on her a little at
a time, and it wasn't long before she began to squirm, and then she
opened her eyes and her mouth just at the same time, so that she must
have swallowed about as much water as she would have taken at a meal.