CHAPTER XIV

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.”