Bobby and Meg laughed and promised to stay close to the bush. Meg folded up the shirt and stuffed it in Jud"s pocket, because she said Dot would drop it in the water if she tried to carry it and Twaddles would want to play with it and might get it dirty. Then Meg and Bobby watched the three wade back and when they reached the opposite bank, they waved to them.
Though Jud had said they could not land, there was a narrow strip of ground firm enough to hold them and it was on this the bush grew where the unknown man had hung his washing.
"I don"t see any house for him to live in," said Bobby curiously.
"Maybe he lives in a tent," Meg answered absently, trying to see across the brook to the tree where she knew Linda was sitting.
"Let"s walk down a little way," suggested Bobby. "We"ll come right back: Jud didn"t say we couldn"t go wading. He only said to be here when he came. Maybe we"ll find the man"s house."
Meg was willing enough, for she was no more fond of sitting still than Bobby was. Holding hands, they began cautiously to wade down stream.
The water rushed more swiftly than they actually liked, but neither would say so. Instead they slipped over the stones and tried to walk as fast as the water, and presently Meg had to stop to get her breath.
"I hear a kitty crying," she said the next minute. "Listen, Bobby--don"t you hear a cat?"
But as noises often do, as soon as Bobby listened intently, the noise stopped. He couldn"t hear a thing and said so.
"There! Now don"t you hear it?" cried Meg. "It"s a little kitty and it must be lost. Oh, Bobby, we have to find it!"
Bobby could hear the kitten mewing now and he was as eager to find it as Meg was. But how could a kitten be in the brook?
"It"s back there!" Meg said, waving her hand toward the marshy land.
"Maybe, if we call it, it will come."
And together they called, "Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!" but the little faint "Meow" sounded just the same.
"Well, I"ll have to hunt for it," declared Bobby, looking at the wet and soggy ground rather regretfully. "I hope there aren"t any snakes in there," he added gloomily.
Meg had a horror of snakes and she didn"t want her dearly loved brother to go where they might be. Neither could she go away and leave the kitten. So, like the brave and affectionate little girl she was, she said she was going with Bobby.
They hoped with all their hearts they wouldn"t see a snake and they didn"t know what they would do if they did, but they had no intention of leaving that forlorn kitty cat to its own fate. And, as sometimes happens, it turned out that they did not have to go where they dreaded to go at all.
"I see it!" cried Meg suddenly, her sharp eyes having searched the bank near them, where it jutted out into the water. "Look, Bobby, in that crooked tree, hanging out over the brook."
Bobby looked. At the very tip end of the longest branch, there clung a tiny ball of dirty white which must be the kitten.
"Scared to death," commented Bobby. "I don"t see how we can get it down: the more I shake the tree, the harder it will dig its claws in.
That"s the way cats do."
But Meg was ready with a plan.
"You climb up the tree," she told Bobby, "and I"ll stand underneath and hold my skirts out; you can pull the cat off and drop it down into my lap."
That was easier said than done, as they both discovered the next minute. For one thing, the water sucked past the tree in a current that forced Meg to brace her feet wide apart to keep her balance. And when Bobby had climbed the tree, he found the limb wasn"t strong enough to bear his weight and he couldn"t crawl out to the cat.
"If I had a pole, I could push her off," he shouted to Meg.
"Bend it down," she called. "Bend the branch down and I"ll pick her off, Bobby."
And, after one or two unsuccessful attempts to bend the branch down, that was just what they did do. Bobby managed to bend it within arm"s reach of Meg, who detached the little cat much as you pick a caterpillar off a leaf. Though the cat stuck tighter to the branch than any caterpillar was ever known to do.
"You"re all right," said Meg soothingly, putting the kitten in her dress and gathering it up like a bag. "Soon as you get home, you can have something to eat and you"ll feel much better."
It was hard work, wading against the current, but they helped each other and by good luck reached the bush, just as they saw Jud starting out from the other side. Dot and Twaddles danced impatiently on the bank, but he had evidently told them to stay there, for they did not follow him.
"Jud! Jud!" called Bobby and Meg, beginning to do a dance of their own. "You don"t know what we found, Jud!"
"If I was you, I"d wait to do my prancing on, dry ground," Jud advised them as he waded across. "It"s safer and drier."
"Did Linda do the shirt? Is it mended?" Meg asked eagerly, when Jud was within easy talking distance.
"Mended tip-top," announced Jud. "b.u.t.tons all on, pocket sewed back, rip between the shoulders all fixed. Never saw a neater job."
"Linda is good as she can be," Meg said gratefully, holding her skirts with one hand and reaching for the shirt with the other. "Let"s spread it out just the way we found it."
They draped the shirt as Meg insisted she remembered seeing it, Jud all the while staring curiously at the little girl.
"What are you holding in your skirt?" he asked when she gave him her free hand and they were ready to cross the brook.
"It"s a surprise," Meg said mysteriously. "I want to surprise Dot and Twaddles. You"ll never be able to guess what it is, either, Jud."
And just as she said that, her foot slipped.
CHAPTER XVI
THE NEW CAT
Meg could not fall flat, for Jud had hold of her hand, but she did drop her carefully held skirt. There was a splash, a startled "Meow!"
and a shriek from Meg.
"Don"t let it drown!" she cried. "Jud, catch it, quick!"
If Meg had planned to surprise the twins, she could not have managed better. They couldn"t quite see what was going on, but they knew that something had happened.
"What is it?" they called. "Can we come in, Jud, can"t we come see?"
Jud made a quick scoop with his hand and brought out the miserable, clawing, spitting little kitten.
"You stay where you are!" he ordered the twins. "Say, where"ll I put this?" he asked helplessly, turning to Meg.
She held up her skirt again and he dropped the kitten in it, since that seemed to be the only place, and as Meg afterward said she was "a little damp" from the cat"s splash and more water wouldn"t hurt.
Then Jud took hold of Meg"s hand more firmly and Bobby"s, too, and they managed to reach the opposite bank without any more mishaps.