germ producer—sick-thoughts. So, as soon as she felt her lungs in working order again she “took the defensive” as Tavia expressed it, and sat up as “straight as a whip,” with her glasses at exactly the proper pitch and the black cord at precisely the accustomed dangle.

“Mar-vel-ous!” gasped Dick, aside, giving the long word an inimitable roll, and, at the same time, bestowing a wondering look on the recently resuscitated teacher.

“But do tell us,” begged Rose-Mary, “what happened first—of all those exciting things?”

“I did,” answered Edna Black. “I was shooting the chute to my heart’s content, when, all of a sudden, I stuck somewhere. Then, after trying everything I knew how to do to get loose, I said my prayers.”

“Next,” called Rose-Mary, indicating Tavia.

“Well, of course,” began Tavia, “Dorothy and I were not to go near the water, but when we saw Edna turn up missing we just kicked off our slippers and, in the language of the poets, ‘got busy.’ I found Ned here, first shot, stuck in between the two corner boards of the chute posts. She didn’t need any coaxing to come up, once I untangled her skirt from a nail which held it fast, and I brought her up without any unnecessary explanations.”

“And, in the meantime Miss Higley had gone down,” interjected Dorothy. “That is she went down after Edna first.”

“And came up last,” added the teacher, with a significant nod to Dorothy.

“How did you find Miss Higley, Parson?” Rose-Mary continued to question, with a view to getting the entire story.

“I found her in a mud hole, held fast, but able to help herself somewhat. Then I—I got her up—somehow—.”

“Indeed I was almost unconscious until you dragged my head up to the air,” Miss Higley hastened to say, anxious to give Dorothy her due, for certainly the rescue was a matter of heroic effort, and Miss Higley, being heavy, and, at the same time, unable to help herself, gave Dorothy the most difficult of all the surprising tasks of that eventful afternoon.

“But when she sank that time—like a stone,” suggested Dick to Dorothy.

“Oh, I merely missed catching hold of a plank and I had to go down—I couldn’t keep up.”

“Certainly; why not?” put in Nita 

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