Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/374

354 “Yes,” continued Julia, encouragingly, “you must remember that we shall quickly get into shallower ater.”

“Are you coming, too?” asked Brenda.

“Why, yes, why not?” responded Julia. “I will swim just behind, in case of any accident, if Frances should slip  off.”

But Frances did not slip off, and in a really rather short time, although it seemed long enough to the cousins, they  had reached shallow water. Here Julia was glad to stand upright, and wade to the shore, a little ahead of Brenda  and her charge.

“I have found a flat stone,” she said, turning around, and wading back to help Brenda with Frances. For now that they had reached shallow water, Frances could neither  float nor walk. She could only kneel while Brenda supported her. When they returned, the two girls made a kind of basket of their hands, and, raising Frances on  it, they managed to get her to the shore. Just as they had reached the rock, they heard a voice from the summit  above them.

“Who’s been doing what? Where in the world have you been?”

“Why, it’s Arthur Weston!” cried Julia. “How in the world did he come here? I thought that he was in the woods of Maine.”

The young man had not waited for a reply. His sharp eye had seen that there was something amiss with the  girls, and clambering down, regardless of seaweed and  pools of slimy water that did not improve the appearance