Page:Mistress Madcap (1937).pdf/71

 she was leaning weakly against the Briggs's kitchen door, almost too exhausted to knock. Miranda soon appeared.

"Why, Hitty," she began in delight. "Art come to spend the afternoon with me? I am alone!" Then she stopped short at sight of the other girl's face. "What is the matter?" she faltered in sudden terror.

"Cherry—oh, Randy!—Cherry" gasped Mehit able.

"Yes, what about Cherry?"

"Cherry—down—your father's cistern!" And Mehitable reeled against the other girl.

Miranda uttered an exclamation of horror. Then she shook her visitor roughly. "I will get Father's rope. Stand up, Hitty! We must get Cherry out ourselves, for no one is home but me. Stay, however—I'll call to make sure." She stepped back into the kitchen and sent her clear, frightened young voice ringing through the house. "Father! Fath-er! Help!"

But only the echoes of her own fright came back to her, and soon she had rejoined Mehitable upon the doorstep, a thick rope coiled over her arm.

When they arrived at the edge of the cistern Mehitable strove to call. But from sheer terror her voice would not come and she looked piteously at Miranda.

"Cherry! Cherry! Art still there?" called Miranda in unconscious irony, answering the appeal in her friend's eyes. To their joy, a faint little voice answered from the cistern and the two girls could hear the terrible chill in it.

"Ooh—I am so-o-o co-old!"