Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/145

Rh was wide open to catch what it could. They laughed and screamed at this new plaything that showered the pretty drops on them. The delicate little white dresses and petticoats clung to wet little bodies, until, not yet satisfied, both children lay down on their stomachs under the heaviest fall of water and laughed in glee.

Just then the Colonel, absorbed in the working of the lawn mower as he rolled it along, turned the corner. Two little shreds of i white dry goods, two bobbing baby heads, and four soggy little feet beating the air amid screams of delight, sent him roaring with laughter into the house for their mother.

The Colonel's wife was a brave little woman, but a wise one. If you're a mother, and curl and bathe and twice daily change two baby outfits throughout, and take pride in the whiteness of their dimities and laces and starched petticoats, you'll understand.

For a moment she screened herself behind the Colonel and laughed, too. The day was warm and the children could not take cold, but they must not think this could be a daily occurrence. Lifting her fresh white skirts and getting as near to the spray as she could without its falling on her, too, she called:

"Helen, come right out, and bring your little brother."

"Te'-boy not 'f'aid. Mamma," Helen gleefully answered. "Shee, Mamma, Te'-boy not 'f'aid. Te'-boy b'ave boy." And, as if to prove how brave he was, Teddy-boy thrashed his little arms up and down in the falling water, ably assisted by Helen, arid Mamma retreated a few feet.

"Children, Mamma wants you to come right straight to her," and two screaming, soppy little forms made a wild dash and landed, gripping her and rubbing wet faces against her soft gown.

"Helen! Teddy! you're wet, and you mustn't touch Mamma's clean dress. See, you've spoiled it already. Oh, Helen, you naughty girl, to go into the water, and let little brother go with his nice, clean dress on! Mamma is going to take you to the bath-room for this."

"To the bath-room, in that tone of voice, had a meaning of its own, and Helen meekly took her mother's hand and followed. The Colonel rescued Ted and gave him to his Grandmother Robertson — "Nannie Ob," the children called her.

Mamma had hardly closed the bathroom door on herself and her dripping little daughter, when Helen said, in the most persuasive voice imaginable:

"Mamma, me fisper 'oo;" and Mamma, stooping to the level of the little diplomat's head, heard, "Mamma, me not dood dirl now, me all time bad dirl. Mamma, Nannie Ob say me drow up be dood dirl — be nice dirl. Mamma, don't 'pank me."

In just ten minutes, a happy, dry little girl, with curls just a little too damp, ran out of the bath-room to join Te'-boy and the Colonel and Nannie Ob in the dining room. Mamma followed, and she was just as happy as the little daughter, for they had talked it all over, and Helen was going to begin to fulfill Nannie Ob's prediction by keeping Te'-boy out of any and all wa ter; and Mamma's heart strings still vibrated with big chords of mother love struck by two tiny hands that stroked her cheeks, while a cooing