"Oh, yes – Jack!" added Dorry. "If it were not for Jack where should we twins be, I'd like to know!"
Said in an ordinary tone of voice, this would have sounded rather flippant, but Dorry uttered the words with true solemnity.
"I think of that often," said Donald, in the same spirit. "It seems so wonderful, too, that we didn't get drowned, or at least die of exposure, and – "
Dorothy interrupted him with an animated "Yes, indeed! Such little teenty bits of babies!"
"It does seem like a miracle," Uncle George said.
"But Jack," continued Donald, warmly, "was such a wonderful swimmer."
"Yes, and wonderful catcher!" said Dorothy. "Just think how he caught us – Ugh! It makes me shiver to think of being tossed in the air over those black, raging waves. We must have looked like little bundles flying from the ship. Wasn't Jack just wonderful, to hold on to us as he did, and work so hard looking for – for the others, too. Mercy! if we only get our feet wet now, Liddy seems to think it's all over with us, – and yet, look what we stood then! Little mites of babies, soaked to the skin, out in an open boat on the ocean all that terrible time."
"Much we cared for that," was Don's comment. "Probably we laughed, or played pat-a-cake, or – "
"Played pat-a-cake!" interrupted Dorry, with intense scorn of Donald's ignorance of baby ways – "babies only six weeks old playing pat-a-cake! I guess not. It's most likely we kicked and screamed like anything; isn't it, Uncle?"
Uncle nodded, with a strange mixture of gravity and amusement, and Donald added, earnestly:
"Whether we cried or not, Jack was a trump. A real hero, wasn't he, Uncle? I can see him now – catching us; then, when the other boat capsized, chucking us into the arms of some one in our boat, and plunging into the sea to save all he could, but able to get back alone, after all." (The children had talked about the shipwreck so often that they felt as if they remembered the awful scene.) "He was nearly dead by that time, you know."
"Yes, and nearly dead or not, if he hadn't come back," chirped Dorothy, who was growing tired of the tragic side of Donald's picture, – "if he hadn't come back to take charge of us, and take us on board the big ship – "
"The Cumberland," said Don.
"Yes, the Cumberland, or whatever she was called; if the Cumberland had not come along the next day, and Jack hadn't climbed on board with us, and wrapped us in blankets, and fed us and so on, it wouldn't have been quite so gay!"
Now, nothing could have been in worse taste than the conclusion of this speech, and Dorothy knew it; but she had spoken in pure defiance of solemnity. There had been quite enough of that for one evening.
Uncle George, dazed, troubled, and yet in some vague way inexpressibly comforted, was quietly looking first at one speaker, then at the other, when Liddy opened the door with a significant, "Mr. Reed, sir, did you ring?"
Oh, that artful Liddy! Uncle read "bed-time" in her countenance. It was his edict that half-past nine should be the hour; and the D's knew that their fate was sealed.
"Good-night, Uncle!" said Donald, kissing his uncle in good, hearty fashion.
"Good-night, Uncle!" said Dorothy, clinging to his neck just an instant longer than usual.
"Good-night, my blessings!" said Uncle George, reluctantly. And as he closed the library door behind them, Nero, shut up in Liddy's room, was barking furiously.
Two more orderly, well-behaved young persons never left an apartment. But I must tell the truth: when they were fairly in the hall, Donald started to go up stairs on the outside, holding on to the balusters, and Dorry ran to the front door, in spite of Liddy's remonstrances, with a frisky, "Oh, do let me have just one breath of fresh air!"
She came back instantly, rushed past Lydia, who was slowly puffing her way up the stairs, met Donald at the first landing (he had condescended by this time to leap over to the regulation side of the balusters), and whispered:
"Upon my sacred word, I saw him! He's out there standing at the front steps!"
"Uncle ought to know it!" exclaimed Donald, turning to run down again.
But he stopped on the next step, for Mr. George came out from the library, opened the front door, and disappeared.
The two D's stole from their rooms, after Liddy bade them good-night, and sat on the top stair, whispering.
"Why did you open your window just now, Donald?"
"Why, because I wanted to look out, of course."
"Now, Don, I know better. You coughed, just to let Uncle know that you were around, if there should be any trouble. You know you did."
"Well, what if I did?" admitted Donald, unwillingly. "Hark!" and he sprang up, ready for action. "No, he's back. It's Uncle. I say, Dorry, it will come hard on us to stay on this side of the hedge, like sheep. I wonder how long it will last."
"Goodness knows! But he didn't say we couldn't go to the Danbys'. I suppose that's because we can get there by going round the back way."
"I suppose so," assented Donald. "So long as we keep off the public road, it's all right."
"How queer!"
"Yes, it is queer," said Donald. "However, Uncle knows best."
"Dear me, how good we are, all of a sudden!" laughed Dorry; but she kissed Donald soberly for good-night, and after going to bed lay awake for at least fifteen minutes, – a great while for her, – thinking over the events of the day and evening.
CHAPTER VII.
THE DANBYS
Who were the Danbys?
They were the Reeds' nearest neighbors, and no two households could be more different. In the first place, the Reeds were a small family of three, with four servants; the Danbys were a large family of twelve, with no servants. The Reeds had a spacious country mansion, rich old furniture, pretty row-boats, fine horses, carriages, and abundant wealth; the Danbys had a little house, poor old furniture, one cow, five pigs, one home-made scow, one wheelbarrow, and no money, excepting the very moderate income earned by the father of the family and his eldest boy. There the great contrast ended. The Danbys were thoroughly respectable, worthy and cleanly; the parents, kind and loving souls, could read and write, and the children were happy, obedient and respectful. To be sure, it would have been very hard for the best schoolmaster of the county to parse some of Mrs. Danby's fluent sentences, or to read at a glance Mr. Danby's remarkable penmanship. But that same learned instructor would have delighted in the cleverness of the sons and daughters, had he been so fortunate as to direct their studies. True, the poor little Danbys had enjoyed but a scant and broken schooling; but they were sharp little things, and native wit served them whenever reading, writing, and arithmetic failed. Indeed, the very fact of their intercourse with Donald and Dorothy had done much for their language and deportment. Yet each individual, from the big brother Ben down to the latest baby, had his or her own peculiar character and style, which not twenty Dons and Dorothys could alter.
It was not very difficult, after all, to remember the names of the young Danbys; for Mr. Danby, being a methodical man, had insisted on their being named in alphabetical order and that they each should have two names, so as to give them their choice in after life. Therefore, the first was Amanda Arabella, – at the present stage of our story, a girl of seventeen, with poetical gifts of her own; the second was Benjamin Buster, aged fifteen; the third, Charity Cora, dark-eyed, thoughtful, nearly thirteen, and, the neighbors declared, never seen without a baby in her arms; the fourth, Daniel David, a robust young person of eleven; the fifth, Ella Elizabeth, red-haired, and just half-past nine, as she said; next came Francis Ferdinand, or "Fandy," as he was called for short, who, though only eight, was a very important member of the family; next, Gregory George, who was six. And here the stock of double names seems to have given out; for after Master Gregory came plain little Helen, aged four; Isabella,