Page:Mosquitos (Faulkner).pdf/206

 them, now. “She’s coming!” Mr. Talliaferro screamed in an ecstasy. “She’s co—”

A faint abrupt shock. The tender stopped immediately. They saw the sweet blonde entirety of Jenny’s legs and the pink seat of her ribboned undergarment as with a wild despairing cry Mr. Talliaferro plunged overboard, taking Jenny with him, and vanished beneath the waves.

All but his buttocks, that is. They didn’t quite vanish, and presently all of Mr. Talliaferro rose in eighteen inches of water and stared in shocked amazement at the branch of a tree directly over his head. Jenny, yet prone in the water, was an indistinguishable turmoil of blondeness and green crêpe and fright. She rose, slipped and fell again, then the Semitic man stepped into the water and picked her up bodily and set her in the boat where she sat and gazed at them with abject beseeching eyes, strangling.

Only Mrs. Wiseman had presence of mind to thump her between the shoulders, and after a dreadful trancelike interval during which they sat clutching their oars and gazing at her while she beseeched them with her eyes, she caught her breath, wailing. Mrs. Wiseman mothered her, holding her draggled unhappy wetness while Jenny wept dreadfully. “He—he sc-scared me so bad,” Jenny gasped after a time, shuddering and crying again, utterly abject, making no effort to hide her face.

Mrs. Wiseman made meaningless comforting sounds, holding Jenny in her arms. She borrowed a handkerchief and wiped Jenny’s streaming face. Mr. Talliaferro stood in the lake and dripped disconsolately, peering his harried face across Mrs. Wiseman’s shoulder. The others sat motionless, holding their oars.

Jenny raised her little wet hands futilely about her face. Then she remarked her hand and she held it before her