rabbits--Jumbo--has tumbled in, and the swans have chased him on to the
island, and we don't know how to get him back again."

She pointed as she spoke to the island, and the boy, following the
direction of her glance, burst out laughing.

"Is that a rabbit?" he said. "Why, it looks more like a drowned rat
than anything else."

"Jumbo is very handsome when he is dry," Drusie said, inclined at first
to be a little offended. But his laughter was infectious, and Jumbo
did after all look so very much like a drowned rat that she could not
help laughing too.

"I say, what a jolly lot of rabbits you have got!" the boy said,
looking down at the other five, who were busy nibbling away at the
grass, without seeming to care in the least what happened to Jumbo;
"but aren't you afraid of their running away?"

"They generally behave beautifully," Drusie said, who, because the
other three were rather shy, was obliged to do all the talking herself;
"but something must have startled Jumbo when we were at the top of the
hill, for he set off at a tremendous scamper, and tumbled in
headforemost before we knew what was happening to him."

"Poor old Jumbo!" said the boy, as he looked across at the shivering,
melancholy rabbit. "We must rescue him though, and that is easily
done."

As he spoke he led the way along the bank to a spot where a thick clump
of willows grew; and moored to one of these trees was a small, light
canoe.

"I'll paddle across in less than no time," he said, "and if the swans
do not interfere, I'll soon bring him safely back to you."

The swans did not interfere, however, and Jumbo a minute or two later
was clasped in Drusie's arms. She almost cried over him in her joy at
his safety.

Sitting down on the bank she began to dry him with her handkerchief;
but it was soaked through at once, and the boy suggested that they
should rub him with their hands. So Drusie placed him tenderly on the
grass, and they rubbed him until their arms ached; and no doubt Jumbo
ached too, for they all rubbed with a will.

"But at any rate," Drusie said in a tone of satisfaction, "he won't
catch cold now, and he is so old that he might have had a dreadful
attack of rheumatism."

Long before Jumbo was dry they had all become very friendly with their
new acquaintance. Jim and Helen and Tommy forgot to be shy, and they
all chatted away together as if they had known each other for quite a
long time. It was not until half an