th.

Sister, clinging with her left hand to the grapevine, leaned forward and
clutched Lettie's hand. When she seized it, Sister backed away, and the
swinging girl landed upright upon the bank.

"Oh, that's fun!" Lettie cried, laughing, loosing herself from "the
loop. Now you come, Mary Judson!"

Thus encouraged they responded one by one, and even the girl who had
broken down and cried agreed to be rescued by this simple means. The
boatman then, after removing his shoes and stockings and rolling up his
trousers, stepped out upon the sunken rock and pushed off the boat.

But it was leaking badly. He dared not take aboard his passengers again,
but turned around and went down stream as fast as he could go so as to
beach the boat in a safe place.

"Now how'll we get back to Scoville?" cried one of Lettie's friends. "I
can never walk that far."

Sister had dropped back, shyly, behind Hiram, when he descended the
tree. She had aided each girl ashore; but only Lettie had thanked her.
Now she tugged at Hiram's sleeve.

"Take 'em home in our wagon," she whispered.

"I can take you to Scoville--or to Miss Bronson's--in the farm wagon,"
Hiram said, smiling. "You can sit on straw in the bottom and be
comfortable."

"Oh, a straw ride!" cried Lettie. "What fun! And he can drive us right
to St. Beris--And think what the other girls will say and how they'll
stare!"

The idea seemed a happy one to all the girls save the cry-baby, Myra
Carroll. And her complaints were drowned in the laughter and chatter of
the others.

Hiram picked up the tools, Sister got the string of fish, and they set
out for the Atterson farmhouse. Lettie chatted most of the way with
Hiram; but to Sister, walking on the other side of the young farmer, the
Western girl never said a word.

At the house it was the same. While Hiram was cleaning the wagon and
putting a bed of straw into it, and currying the horse and gearing him
to the wagon, Mrs. Atterson brought a crock of cookies out upon the
porch and talked with the girls from St. Beris. Sister had run indoors
and changed her shabby and soiled frock for a new gingham; but when she
came down to the porch, and stood bashfully in the doorway, none of the
girls from town spoke to her.

Hiram drove up with the farm-wagon. Most of the girls had accepted the
adventure in the true spirit now, and they climbed into the wagon-bed
on the clean straw with laughter and jokes. But nobody invited Sister to
join