FOUND!

FAST as Mr. Webster rowed, it was not fast enough for Philip’s anxiety. They both knew that if the Fairy had drifted down to Banksome Weir they would probably be too late to save Juliet from a terrible death. On a single minute might depend the fate of the girl.

Mr. Webster set his teeth and pulled with all his strength; Mrs. Webster was steering, and she kept the boat in mid-stream that it might get the full force of the current. Phil knelt in the bows, keeping the sharpest look-out for any sign of his missing cousin. The damp wind blew down the river and drove them on.

They passed many other boats and two or three barges, but not a sign of the Fairy. They flew along between green banks, between hedges, trees, houses. Sometimes they could see nothing more distant than a hedge, at other times the flat fields stretched back and back, and were lost at the feet of misty gray hills. But not on the river, nor on the banks, nor in the fields, could Philip see Juliet’s figure.

“How little even some grown men know about rowing!” was Mr. Webster’s remark when he saw a heavy-looking boat with a smaller one tied to its stern coming up the middle of the stream. “It is that old gentleman who, they say, is staying at the hotel with his son, and their man-servant is sculling them up the very stiffest bit of the current.”

“Hoorah!” shouted Philip. “All right, Juliet!”

For on the seat beside Mr. Burnet, sheltered by his umbrella, sat the truant girl, while young Leonard was giving Roberts instructions in the art of rowing.

The two boats met and came alongside. Philip was so greatly relieved in mind that he almost felt inclined to cry, while Juliet was silent and ashamed if not sulky.

“This child has given her friends at Littlebourne Lock a terrible fright,” said Mr. Webster to Mr. Burnet. “When they discovered that the boat was missing as well as the girl, they quite thought that both must have gone over the weir together.”

The vicar had brought his boat close beside Mr. Burnet’s, and held the rowlocks of the latter while he asked questions.

“Is she hurt in any way?”

“No, not at all. I think we came upon her just in time.”

“Had she got down as far as the weir?”

“Just to the first pier which is marked with the word DANGER.”

“Oh, Juliet!” cried Philip with a gasp. “If the Fairy had been drawn to the wrong side of that post ”

Mr. Webster looked so grave, and they were all so impressed with a sense of the great peril she had incurred, that Juliet’s pride and coldness were broken down for once, and she sat beside Mr. Burnet weeping silently.

“Well, well,” said Mrs. Webster, “she is tired, and I daresay hungry, and you had better get her home as quickly as you can. There is heavy rain coming up, and we must be down at Egham by four o’clock if possible. I am afraid we shall be caught by the storm. Philip Rowles, get into this gentleman’s boat, and help to take your cousin home.”

“And I will look in one day, little girl, and have a talk with you,” said the vicar of Littlebourne as he bent to his work and flew down the river, distancing the storm.

Leonard Burnet now took an oar and Roberts took the other, and they rowed hard against wind and current. Mr. Burnet sheltered Juliet and himself as best he could against the rain, which came in heavy, uncertain dashes. Philip had to sit on the planks at their feet, for the stern seat only held two.

“Do tell me, Juliet, all that has happened to you. Did the Fairy go adrift by accident?”

“No,” replied Juliet through her muffled sobs.

“Then how did she get unmoored? I do believe she has lost a scull!” Philip added, trying to examine the poor old boat which was being towed behind them. “I can’t make out very well, but I think she has lost a scull and her rudder.”

“Yes,” said Juliet in a husky voice.

“I don’t know what my father will say ” Philip began.

“I know what he will say,” interrupted Mr. Burnet. “He will be so overjoyed to see his little niece again safe and sound that he will say not a word about the scull and the rudder.”

“He will want to know how it all happened,” said Philip; then he added, addressing Juliet, “you will have to tell him every bit about it from beginning to end.”

“I can’t, I won’t,” said Juliet faintly.

Philip was all in a fidget to hear a full account of Juliet’s adventure, so he said, shaking his head, “Ah, then, I should advise you to tell me the story, and then I can tell it to father, and save you the trouble.”

“Yes, Juliet,” added Mr. Burnet; “tell us the whole story.”

Thus persuaded, the girl poured out the tale of her adventures, which had been pent up in her stubborn heart, as the waters were sometimes pent up in the lock; and then, just as the waters when they escape from the lock pour out and away in a mad foaming rush, so Juliet’s thoughts and words poured themselves out in a torrent when once she began to talk.

“I thought I thought it was quite easy to manage a boat; and I thought I would just take the Fairy a little way, over to the opposite bank, and get some forget-me-nots and come back again.”

“Were you not forbidden to take out the boat?” asked Mr. Burnet.

Juliet hung her head, and then lifting it said, “Yes; but I did not care. I would not be ordered about by them, nor by nobody. So I got into the boat when they were all busy and untied the bit of rope from the post, and then the water made it move away quite quick. And I wanted to sit on the little seat that goes across, and I slipt and caught my shin such a crack against the edge of it, and I went down on my face on the floor; and I should have liked to call out, but I did not want anybody to know that I was gone. And when I did get on the seat and rubbed my shin-bone, which it has got the skin scratched off and sticking to my stocking, there was two great pieces of wood to be put out on each side to push the boat on with.”

“The sculls,” Philip put in.

“They ain’t skulls; they are more like arms, or legs perhaps. They were so heavy, and when I pulled one up from the floor and put the end of it over into the water, I found it was the wrong end, and the spoon part had come into the boat. So I got that one to go right after a fight with it, and the other one went right much sooner; and so when they were right in their sockets the boat was gone out into the middle of the water. And I was frightened, I can tell you.”

“I should think so!” said Mr. Burnet.

“Go on,” said young Leonard.

“And so I tried to put both the sticks in the water at the same time, but when one went down the other went up, and the one that went down made a great splash, and then got itself so much under the water that it would not come up again for a long time; and so the one that went up seemed to get stuck, and when it came down it made a worse splash than the other one, and the water jumped up and hit me in the face and made my hat all wet. And there was a great black boat as big as Noah’s ark going by, and three horses drawing it, and a little chimney in it, and two men, and they called out ‘See-saw! see-saw!’ and it was awful rude of them.”

“And what happened next?”

“Why, I thought I could get along better if I had one oar at a time; and so I took up one and put both hands to it, and dipped it down deep and pulled it hard in the water, and so the other one got loose somehow and slipped away and fell into the water. And there was a boat and people sitting in it on chairs with fishing-rods, and they did so laugh at me; and some men on the bank they laughed too, and called out something, but I don’t know what they said. And then the boat went on and on, and I saw some broad white posts like you have at Littlebourne Weir, and the boat went up sideways tight against the posts, and I sat still and waited until somebody come by to help me.”

“And were you not frightened?”

“I was that frightened I could not have spoke if it was ever so.”

“Well, well, well,” said Mr. Burnet, “here you are safe, and very thankful you must be that we came down just in time to save you. Had the boat been carried over the weir you would have been drowned. But when Roberts saw you he knew you were one of the Littlebourne children, and my son felt sure that you were in distress.”

As soon as Juliet had told her story she relapsed into silence; the excitement of her rescue was passing off, and the terror of her danger remained. She sat beside Mr. Burnet and heard the rain pattering on his umbrella, and wished she was at the lock and wished she was in London, and wished she was grown-up and doing for herself, and not so stupid and always putting other people out and making things go wrong. Juliet was quite sure that though she had got into trouble with the boat, there were heaps of other things that she would be very clever about.

The rain was pouring down when Mr. Burnet’s boat arrived at Littlebourne Lock.

Cries of joy greeted Juliet as soon as her relations saw her. Mr. Rowles was full of gruff thanks to the gentlemen, and begged the whole party to go inside the house until the rain should cease. For there was bright sky beyond the black clouds, and the shower would soon be over. So they all went into the “lodgers’ rooms,” as Mrs. Rowles called those which she was in the habit of letting, and there they sat together talking.

“I am afraid,” said Mrs. Rowles, “that Juliet will never do better until she learns to be guided by the orders and the advice of other people. I used to think that she wanted encouraging and helping on, but I find that she really thinks a great deal of herself, and does not like to be told anything.”

“But she must and shall be told!” cried her uncle. “A bit of a girl setting herself up against her elders indeed! If she is to stay in my house she shall obey my orders. Do you hear me, Juliet?”

“Yes,” answered Juliet.

“And your aunt’s orders.”

“Yes, as long as I am in your house.”

With these words Juliet burst into a flood of angry tears, and kicked her heels upon the floor in a violent manner.

“You had better go up to your room,” said Mrs. Rowles gently.

The girl flung herself away, slamming the door after her.

“A troublesome child,” said Mr. Burnet.

“Yes, sir. Poor thing! there are excuses to be made for her. Of late years her father has been a good deal out of work and in bad health; and then living in a close-packed part of London is trying to the temper. And she’s a baby beginning to feel her feet, and beginning to feel herself getting on towards a woman. I am very sorry for her, poor child, but I don’t know about keeping her with us. You don’t want your whole comfort upset.”

“And your boat too,” said Rowles; “and your scull broken and lost. It’s a-clearing up, I do believe,” he added, going out to the front of the house, for he never stayed indoors when he could be out. Roberts followed him.

“Where does the child come from?” Mr. Burnet asked of Mrs. Rowles.

She named the street, and added, “Her father is a printer, and that is one thing that makes my husband so set against her.”

“Why so?” inquired the gentleman.

“Because he thinks it unhealthy and wicked-like to work by night and sleep by day, as you must when you are on a morning paper like poor Thomas. You see, sir, Rowles has been lock-keeper these seventeen years with eighteen shillings a-week and a house, and his hours from six in the morning to ten at night; so he always gets his money regular and his sleep regular, and he can’t see why other men can’t do the same.”

“We cannot be all of one trade,” remarked Mr. Burnet. “And I hope he does not hold that bad opinion of all in the printing business, because I am a printer myself.”

“You, sir!” cried Mrs. Rowles, while Emily opened her eyes.

“I don’t mean exactly in the same way as that child’s father, but I am in the same line. When I was a younger man I used to sit in the office of a newspaper every alternate night to receive the foreign telegrams as they came in. It was rather trying. Ah, Mrs. Rowles, while half the world is asleep in bed the other half is hard at work getting things ready for the sleepers when they waken. Do you know that, my dear?” he finished, as he turned to Emily.

“Yes, sir,” replied Emily. “The people in Australia are asleep while the people in England are awake.”

The gentleman laughed. “I did not mean that exactly, but you are quite right, my child. Yes, day and night come turn about to most of us. I am taking life easier now as I grow old. Most of my work is over. It is my boy’s turn to go on with the task. One wants rest after the heat and burden of the day; and it is a blessed thing when at evening time there is light, and we can think over the mistakes and the mercies of the past, and look forward to the repose and joy of the future.”

These words were so serious that Mrs. Rowles did not attempt to reply to them. And presently Mr. Burnet roused himself from his solemn thoughts and said brightly, “There! clear shining after rain. Now, we must say good-bye and go home.”

While Mr. Burnet and Mrs. Rowles had been talking, Roberts and the lock-keeper had also been conversing.

“It is my own fault,” Rowles said, “and my wife’s. One might know that a London girl like that would be sure to get into trouble in the country. Her father’s a printer; sits up all night, and naturally never has his head clear for anything.”

“Oh, come now,” replied Roberts; “you are too hard on printers, you are. If they were not clear-headed I don’t see how they could set up their type without more mistakes than they make. Why, I’ve had relations myself in the printing line, and Mr. Burnet is a master-printer himself.”

“Is he now?” said Rowles.

“That’s what we’re down here for. He’s bought up half the Thames Valley Times and Post, and he wants to live near the works, and while we are looking out for a house we have to stay at the hotel. Mr. Leonard is going into the business too, as soon as he is old enough.”

Roberts had just reached this point when Mr. Burnet came out from the house. Rowles looked with more interest at the old gentleman who was in the same line with Thomas Mitchell, and from that moment began to think better of printers in general.

The sky was rapidly clearing, so the three visitors turned the cushions of the boat, and stepping into it went through the lock, and were soon going up between the green banks and hedges, all deliciously freshened by the heavy summer rain.

“He’s a nice old fellow,” Rowles muttered to himself; “but then all printers are not like him. Here, Phil, see what you can do to put the Fairy in order again. But as for that Juliet, if my wife was not so soft-hearted I would turn the girl out to run home or to get her own living.”