Harriet, still gasping for breath from her long slide and the dive under water following, plunged ahead and dived again.  She came up with the struggling, choking Buster firmly gripped in one hand.  Margery was trying to grasp Harriet, and the latter was experiencing some difficulty in keeping out of her clutches.  Tommy, in the meantime, had reached the other side of the pond and crawled up on the shore, where she lay complaining to herself, watching the struggle in the water with wide-open eyes.  Now and then she shouted a suggestion.

“Oh, my stars!” cried Jane.  Coming up, she splashed about in the pond trying to get her bearings.  Then, seeing Harriet’s struggle with Margery, Jane headed for them in a series of porpoise-like lunges.  The last reach brought a hand in contact with one of Margery’s feet.  Jane gave it a mighty tug.  “Put her under, put her under!  That’ll stop her!” shouted Jane.

“Let go, Jane,” called Harriet.  “She is all right now.  She has her bearings now.  Let us see if she has forgotten how to swim.”  Harriet threw Margery off.  The latter splashed and floundered in the cold water, then all at once struck off for the shore.  She reached it and scrambled to the bank, up which she staggered and sank whimpering to the earth.

Jane and Harriet swam shoreward.  Jane was laughing almost hysterically.  Though she felt chilled and exhausted, Harriet’s eyes twinkled.  The two struggled to the bank, there to sit down laughing.

“Are you safe?” shouted Miss Elting.

“Hoo-e-e-e!” answered the two girls.

“Are you all right, Tommy?” Harriet next called across the pond.

“Yeth, but I’m almotht wet and cold.  My clothes are thoaked, and there are ithicleth hanging from my eyebrowth.  Thomebody better thave me?”

“Come over here,” proposed Harriet, teasingly, “and we will.”

“I can’t,” Tommy replied, with a shake of her head.  “Too many thraight, high rockth in the way.”

“Swim across, darlin’,” urged Jane.

“Can’t do that either, the water ith too cold.”

“Then you’ll have to stay where you are,” laughed Jane.  “If you get hungry, come over and I’ll give you a biscuit to take back there with you.”

“Girls, I feel so relieved,” cried Miss Elting, running down to join them.  “But why did you do such a foolish thing?”

“We came after Tommy,” replied Miss McCarthy.  “If that were foolish, we apologize.”

“Tommy,” ordered Miss Elting, “come here!”

“I can’t,” complained the little one.

“We’ll have to go after her,” sighed Harriet, “or the little goose will stay there.  Miss Elting, how would you like to take a nice, cool morning swim?”

“No, thank you,” replied the guardian, with a little shiver.  “Here is Janus.  You see that my girls are all valiant, Mr. Grubb.”

There was a note of pride in the guardian’s voice.