LANKY FINDS HIS CHANCE
“There she is!”
“Oh! why doesn’t somebody jump overboard, and save her, poor thing?”
cried Helen Allen; at the same time clinging to Paul Bird so
desperately that he could not have attempted the rescue act, even
though inclined that way.
Lanky seized hold of Walter Ackerman.
“She was with you!” he shouted; “why don’t you go in after her?”
The handsome boy never looked as he did then, white in the face, and
frightened.
“I would; indeed, I’d do it in a minute--but I can’t swim a stroke!” he
gasped.
Without waiting to hear another word Lanky threw him contemptuously
aside, “just as he might a sack of oats,” Helen afterwards said, in
describing it all to Frank.
One look Lanky cast over the side, as he kicked his shoes off, and sent
his jacket flying after them. This showed him a white face in the
midst of the water, and, he thought, a pair of hands held out toward
him.
Then Lanky jumped.
The _Harrapin Belle_ careened far over on the port side, because
everyone aboard had hastened to that quarter, in order to learn what
happened. They saw Lanky come to the surface after his dive, and fling
the water out of his eyes. Then he struck out for the spot where the
girl seemed to be struggling, trying to swim perhaps; for Dora was
known to possess that accomplishment, though her skirts bothered her
considerably now.
“Hurray! he’s got her!” whooped Ben Allison, in great excitement.
“Bully for our Lanky; he’s just the screamer to-day, though! Won the
long run; and now saved the prettiest girl outside of Columbia town!”
shouted another boy.
The girls were clapping their hands, and almost wishing that fortune
had been kind enough to let them figure in the rôle of a heroine;
though the water did look pretty wet, and it was evidently very deep
right at this point in the Harrapin.
“We must get them in, fellows!” called Ben, as he gave the signal for
the boy at the engine to back the boat down the current.
“Oh! be careful, Ben, and don’t run over them!” begged Helen, as a new
fear began to tug at her heart.
“I’ll look out,” came the confident reply, as the boat started slowly
to follow the current, and gain on the struggling couple.
But Lanky was not worrying a bit. He had his arm tight around the waist
of Dora, and was easily keeping himself afloat, for he was a good
swimmer--almost like a duck in the water, his mates used to say.
“Are you all right, Dora?” he asked, wondering whether she had retained
her senses through it all.
She clung all the tighter to him, as though that alone ought to answer
his question. Perhaps, after it was all over, Dora would treat him just
as coldly as ever; but while it lasted Lanky was not “caring whether
school kept or not,” as he described it.
They were soon enabled to reach the side of the boat; and as some
of the boys above reached down their hands, Dora’s dripping figure
was quickly drawn up. But it might have been noticed that the girl
studiously avoided touching the hand of Walter Ackerman. He was bound
to pay a heavy penalty for never having learned to swim.
“His cake is dough, all right!” was the way Paul Bird expressed it to
Helen, after he had seen this aversion on the part of the rescued girl.
“And I guess there’s just going to be all peace between Lanky and Dora
after this.”
“It’s just wonderful, that’s all I can say!” exclaimed Frank’s young
sister. “If it had been a page out of a story it couldn’t have happened
nicer. But they’re helping Lanky up now. Oh! isn’t he just dripping,
though?”
“But he rather likes it,” Paul went on to say. “Lanky always was a sort
of water-dog. I’ve known him to spend the best part of a day in the
river. You couldn’t drown him if you tried. See him grin, will you,
when he looks at poor Walter, who’s got to take a back seat after this,
I reckon.”
“Well, serves him right!” declared Helen. “Every boy ought to know how
to swim, if he ever expects a girl to feel confidence in him at all.
And I’m so glad that _you_ can, Paul.”
Lanky Wallace no longer looked glum and unhappy. He realized that
fortune had beamed upon him that day in a way he could never have
dreamed would happen. It was not enough that he should come in far
ahead of the field in that long run, beating the best amateur time
known in that section of the country for a five-mile race; but now this
had come about in the bargain.
Dora was wrapped in a rug they had aboard. Lanky disdained to bother
himself about his wet clothes. He managed to get his shoes on, after
an effort and covered his shoulders with his jacket. He said he felt
as “warm as toast”; and perhaps from the way his heart was pounding
away inside, he had good reason for declaring this.
And now, when he caught those dancing eyes of Dora which he used to
think were the prettiest and sauciest he had ever seen, he found no
reason to scowl, and hasten to avert his gaze, for they sparkled with
happiness, and his every glance met a smile.
Finally, before they reached town, he saw Dora beckoning imperiously to
him; just as in those old days before the quarrel, Lanky jumped to obey.
She held out her little hand, and he clasped it eagerly.
“I’m going with Helen to dry my clothes,” the girl said in a low tone,
“and if you could come for me in about half an hour in some sort of a
vehicle, Lanky, I’d be ever so much obliged to you to take me up home.”
“Will I? Well, I guess yes, and glad in the bargain, Dora,” he replied,
with a happy look that told her the bitterness had all gone out of his
heart.
“You’ll forgive me being so unkind to you; won’t you, Lanky?” she
continued, as Helen very considerately turned away.
“Never mention it again to me, Dora. I want to forget we ever had a
falling out,” the boy went on, rapidly.
“And we’re going to be friends again, then, good friends like we used
to be?” she continued, gladness in her voice.
“Better than ever--that is, if you care to have me take you around,
instead of _him_,” Lanky replied suggestively, and her pretty face took
on a very scornful look as she went on:
“Him! Oh! I despise him now, too much for me to tell you. I never did
care so much for him, Lanky, and was only trying to make you believe I
did. But to think of him willing to see me drown there! Oh! the coward!
I never, never mean to even speak to him again!”
“Well,” said Lanky, feeling a little compunction in his generous heart
toward the unlucky object of this girlish disdain; “p’raps he isn’t to
blame so much after all, because he says he can’t swim even a little
bit; and if that’s so, you know he couldn’t ’a’ helped you a whit, even
if he had jumped over.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she persisted, girl-like; “if he’d been real
brave, like some boys I know, he’d have jumped in, anyway. Why, I might
have saved him then, don’t you see, Lanky? Mr. Walter Ackerman had
better go and take lessons in swimming before he expects any Columbia
girl to be his company again. They all know him now.”
Lanky looked at her a little queerly. He was in reality wondering
whether, after all, the plucky girl might not have been pretending to
be in greater peril than was actually the case, after finding herself
dumped into the river, just to see which one of her boy friends would
do the life-saving act. But he never knew whether there was any truth
in this far-fetched idea or not.
Although Lanky Wallace had won considerable renown that day by reason
of his leading the string of long-distance runners, and by such
remarkable time, he seemed to think more of the fact that he was
expected to get a rig, and take Dora to the farm of her parents, quite
a number of miles north of Columbia, where the Harrapin became almost
like a creek.
Lanky could look back to pleasant days spent at that same farm. And yet
he really believed that he had never contemplated visiting the Baxter
home with more lively anticipations of pleasure than on this occasion.
Promptly at the time appointed he drove up to the Allen house with
a horse and buggy. That it was not a thoroughbred Lanky privately
admitted to Frank, when the other joked him on the appearance of the
steed.
“That’s all right,” he said in Frank’s ear; “takes longer to get there.
Some people, when they’ve got a good thing, don’t know how to string
it out. I do. That’s why I declined the use of a horse that could go
a mile in three minutes. Why, honest now, Frank, this nag’s so steady
that the livery man said a one-armed boy could drive him.”
No doubt, on the long ride up to the farm a full explanation and
reconciliation took place between Lanky and Dora. He only too gladly
forgave her when she pleaded that she was only a silly little girl, but
that she had learned a lesson; and they agreed to be as good friends as
ever.
It must have been fully midnight when Lanky drove that “very steady”
horse at a pretty swift pace back into town, and the way the animal
covered the ground on the return journey might have surprised Dora,
could she have known of his performance.
And Lanky had good reason to feel rather well satisfied with the events
of that Saturday, which must always be marked with a white stone in his
history.
There was now only one more thing on his mind--the clearing of the
mystery concerning the identity of the little child in the gypsy camp.
No word had as yet come from the party to whom he had sent that long
message, costing himself and his chum more than three dollars. In
another week the great athletic meet was to take place.
“Well,” mused Lanky, as he prepared to go to bed in the small hours of
Sunday morning, after returning the rig to the livery stable where it
had been procured; “I hope something _will_ turn up before the gypsies
move away. I’d hate to spend all that coin for nothing; and never know
whether I was a smart guesser, or just a simple fool, for thinking that
baby girl could be the long-lost Effie Elverson. P’raps I’m due for
another little streak of luck. They say it always hunts in threes. But,
as Frank tells me, I mustn’t worry. This business came out jolly well;
and p’raps the other may. Wow! but I’m sleepy, though, and that bed
looks fine. So it is good-night for me.”