“I shall lose her! I shall lose her!” cried the boy in a tragic voice.
“How came you to let go of the string?” asked his small companion.
“I had forgotten all about it; I was thinking of those people. Hurrah! the wind is shifting; she is coming nearer. I do believe I could reach her with my stick.”
Macneillie watched the boy’s strenuous efforts to recapture the tiny craft, which seemed almost within his reach, yet somehow always eluded him. Suddenly, at the very moment when his stick had touched the boat, he lost his balance and fell headlong over the low foot-rail into the water.
Macneillie had hurried to the rescue before Evereld’s cry of terror had reached Fraulein Ellerbeck. He lifted out the dripping boy and laid him on the path, and Ralph, recovering from the shock and rubbing his wet eyelashes, looked up to find a grave face bending over him and to meet the inquiry of the kindest blue-grey eyes he had ever seen.
“None the worse for your bath, I hope?” said Macneillie, smiling a little.
“No, thank you,” said Ralph, struggling to his feet and looking very much like Johnnie Head-in-air when “with hooks the two strong men hooked poor Johnnie out again.”
“It was awfully good of you to help me,” he added, gratefully.
“And now let us rescue the boat,” said Macneillie, winning golden opinions from the children by the real pains he took to capture the _Rob Roy_, and the same from Fraulein Ellerbeck by his courteous farewell.
“So few Englishmen,” she remarked, “know how to bow. You must take a lesson from him, Ralph.”
“And, oh, Fraulein,” said Evereld, as they walked briskly home, that Ralph might change his clothes, “did you see what a long time Miss Christine Greville stayed talking to him? And part of the time they were quite close to us, and we heard her say that soon every one would know she was to be married--I think, to some very rich man--and she would have a theatre of her own, and Mr. Macneillie should act there.”
“You should not have listened, my dears,” said Fraulein Ellerbeck, uneasily.
“But, indeed, Fraulein, we couldn’t help it; her voice was so very, very clear, it reached us every word just like raindrops pattering on leaves.”
“And so did his voice too,” said Ralph. “He seemed quite angry when she said that. He said he would never accept such a post, and that she didn’t a bit understand how he loved her.”