their owners. Some capsized utterly. Others started to founder and
had to be dragged ashore. A few brought the cruise to a triumphant
finish.

But Tim soon put an end to this fun. Unexpectedly, his foot caught
somewhere and he sprawled headlong in the tide. “Oh, Tim!” Molly
said. But she said it without surprise or anger. And Tim lay flat on
his stomach without moving, as if it were a common occurrence with
him. Molly waded out to him, picked him up and marched him into the
house.

The other little girl had disappeared. Suddenly she came out of one
of the yards, clasping a Teddy-bear and a whole family of dolls in
her fat arms. She sat down at the puddle’s edge and began to undress
them. Maida idly watched the busy little fingers—one, two, three,
four, five—now there were six shivering babies. What was she going
to do with them? Maida wondered.

“Granny,” Maida called, “do come and see this little girl! She’s—”
But Maida did not finish that sentence in words. It ended in a
scream. For suddenly the little girl threw the Teddy-bear and all
the six dolls into the puddle. Maida ran out the door. Half-way
across the court she met Dicky Dore swinging through the water.
Between them they fished all the dolls out. One was of celluloid and
another of rubber—they had floated into the middle of the pond. Two
china babies had sunk to the very bottom—their white faces smiled
placidly up through the water at their rescuers. A little rag-doll
lay close to the shore, water-logged. A pretty paper-doll had melted
to a pulp. And the biggest and prettiest of them, a lovely blonde
creature with a shapely-jointed body and a bisque head, covered with