Roger, with his rather long hair carefully brushed, sauntered downstairs to the nicely furnished dining-room, where his mother was eating breakfast. Mrs. Fairchild was a most attractive little woman. Like Roger, she was blue-eyed and fair. She was taller, however, than Roger and not nearly so wide.
"Good morning," said she, with a very pleasant smile. "I guess we're both late this morning. Your father's been gone for twenty minutes."
"Dear me!" said Mrs. Fairchild, catching sight of her son's remarkably sleek head. "I do wish you wouldn't put so much water on your hair when you comb it. It isn't at all necessary and it looks _horrid_--particularly when it's so long. Do be more careful next time."
"I will," promised Roger, helping himself to an orange.
"It must have taken you a great while to dress. I thought I heard you stirring about hours ago."
"Yes'm," returned Roger, looking anywhere except at his pretty mother.
"I'm glad you remembered to put on your old clothes, since it's Saturday. But--why, _Roger_! What is that?"
"That" was a thin, brownish stream, scarcely more than an elongated drop--trickling down the boy's wrist to the back of his plump hand. Roger looked at it with horror. His drenched, fleece-lined underwear was betraying him.
Mrs. Fairchild pushed up his coat sleeve, turned back the damp cuff of his blue cotton shirt, and disclosed three inches of wet, close-fitting sleeve. She poked an investigating finger up her son's arm. Then her suspicious eye caught a curious change of color in the bosom of his blue shirt. It had darkened mysteriously in patches. She touched one of them. Then she reached up under his coat and felt his moist back.
"Roger, how in the world did your shirt get so wet? Surely you didn't do all that washing yourself?"
"Hum--Katie says somebody dug a hole in my pansy bed last night. It's a splendid place for worms. Have you, by any chance, been trying your new pole?"
"Roger Fairchild! You're _shivering_! And that window wide open behind you! Come upstairs with me this instant and I'll put you to bed between hot blankets. It's a mercy I discovered those wet clothes. I'll have Katie bring you some hot broth the moment you're in bed."
Roger, under a mountain of covers, was thankful that he hadn't had to divulge the important part Jeanne Duval had played in his rescue. All that morning, when his mother asked troublesome questions, he shivered so industriously that the anxious little woman fled for more hot blankets or more hot broth. The blankets were tiresome and he already held almost a whole boyful of broth; but _anything_, he thought, was better than telling that he had been pulled out of the lake in a smelly old fish net; and by a girl! A _small_ girl at that.