The first thing Dot did was to step in a deep hole and get her dress and tucked-up skirt wet nearly to her shoulders.

“It’s all right,” said Meg calmly. “Aunt Polly brought some dry things with her. I guess she expected Dot to go in bathing instead of wading.”

This made Dot very indignant, but she pattered along after the others, and in a few minutes forgot to be cross. When you are wading in a clear, cold brook with little dancing leaves making checkered patterns on the water, and a green forest all around you, you can not stay cross long.

“I see something,” said Bobby suddenly. “Look! Over there where it’s wide! Don’t you see it, Meg?”

“Looks like clothes,” said Meg, shading her eyes with her hand, for the sun on the water dazzled her. “Maybe it’s a wash. Aunt Polly said 142 some of the hired men around here wash their clothes in the brook. Let’s go and see.”

“Here, here! Where are you going?” called Jud, as they began to scramble down.

“We saw something on the other side of the brook,” explained Bobby. “We’re going over to see what it is.”

“Well, you just wait,” ordered Jud. “That’s the widest part of the brook down there, and all that side is swampy land. You can’t land on it. You’ll sink in. Wait till I take my shoes off, and I’ll come and help you.”

Jud took off his shoes and socks and rolled his trousers up to his knees. He wasn’t afraid that the four little Blossoms would drown, for the brook was not very deep in any part. But it was wide at the point where Bobby wanted to cross, and there was no bank, only a piece of swamp, on the other side.

“Now I’ll take Dot and Twaddles, and you and Meg hold hands,” said Jud, as he stepped into the water. “Come on, Pirates, let’s board yonder frigate.”

The children giggled and stepped gingerly 143 after Jud. They were glad he had come with them, for the mild little brook looked like a river to them as they got out into the middle of it.

“What do you suppose that is over there?” said Bobby. “I wish it was buried treasure. I never found any buried treasure.”

“Maybe it is Indians,” Meg suggested a little fearfully.

“With a flag of truce?” said Jud, understanding at once. “Well, Meg, I don’t believe we have any Indians around here.”

He made a dive for Dot and saved her from slipping, but she wasn’t a bit grateful.

“I almost caught a crab,” she sputtered.

Before Bobby could tell her that crabs didn’t live in brooks, they had reached the piece of swamp land and all four children rushed for the fluttering bit of white which had attracted Bobby’s attention.

“Why, it’s a shirt!” said Twaddles in great disappointment.

Whatever he had expected to see, it certainly 144 wasn’t a shirt and he felt cheated. Jud had to laugh at the queer expression on his face.

Meg, however, did not laugh. She was eyeing the shirt closely and Jud saw that she had something on her mind. Perhaps Meg was his favorite among the children, if he had a favorite. He had once told Linda that Meg was a “regular little woman” and indeed, quiet as she was, she often saw things that other people did not notice.

“Jud,” she said now, “that shirt hasn’t any buttons on it and the pocket is ripped. And Linda brought her sewing basket.”

Bobby looked at his little sister as though he thought she was losing her mind.

“What’s a sewing basket got to do with it?” he demanded.

“It needs mending,” said Meg soberly. “Maybe the man who washed it hasn’t any needle and thread.”

The twins declared that everyone had needle and thread, but Jud rather spoiled their argument by announcing that he had none.

“I can’t sew, so what good would needle and thread do me?” he asked them.

Meg, forgetting the shirt for a moment, asked him what he did when buttons came off his clothes.

“My mother sews them on again,” said Jud, “and Mother darns my socks and Mother mends the rips I get in my coats.”

“There, you see!” Meg cried triumphantly. “This man hasn’t any mother to sew buttons on him.”

“On his shirt, you mean,” giggled Dot.

“Well, maybe he hasn’t,” Bobby admitted. “I don’t suppose he has, or he wouldn’t have to do his own washing. But Linda’s basket is on the other side of the brook.”

“I’m going to take the shirt over to her and ask her to mend it,” announced Meg. “I know she will. Then I’ll bring it back and hang it on the bush and won’t he be surprised!”

Jud chuckled.

“He’ll be more surprised if he comes along and his shirt is missing,” he laughed. “Why, he’ll think the birds made way with it.”

This was a new problem for Meg and she thought about it for several minutes.

“Dot and Twaddles can stay here,” she decided, “and if the man comes, they can tell him that I will bring his shirt back as soon as it is mended.”

But the twins did not take kindly to the idea of being left alone. They said they were going back when Jud went.

“Then you take the shirt, and I’ll stay,” said Meg, who seldom gave up a plan, once she had made it. “Please ask Linda to put the buttons on and mend the pocket and then you bring it right back.”

Jud looked doubtful at the thought of leaving Meg, even when Bobby declared he would stay with her.

“I have to go, for the children can’t get back alone,” he said, “but you mustn’t go away from here: I want to be able to find you when I bring the laundry home.”

Bobby and Meg laughed and promised to stay close to the bush. Meg folded up the shirt and stuffed it in Jud’s pocket, because she said 147 Dot would drop it in the water if she tried to carry it and Twaddles would want to play with it and might get it dirty. Then Meg and Bobby watched the three wade back and when they reached the opposite bank, they waved to them.

Though Jud had said they could not land, there was a narrow strip of ground firm enough to hold them and it was on this the bush grew where the unknown man had hung his washing.

“I don’t see any house for him to live in,” said Bobby curiously.

“Maybe he lives in a tent,” Meg answered absently, trying to see across the brook to the tree where she knew Linda was sitting.

“Let’s walk down a little way,” suggested Bobby. “We’ll come right back: Jud didn’t say we couldn’t go wading. He only said to be here when he came. Maybe we’ll find the man’s house.”

Meg was willing enough, for she was no more fond of sitting still than Bobby was. Holding hands, they began cautiously to wade down stream.

The water rushed more swiftly than they actually 148 liked, but neither would say so. Instead they slipped over the stones and tried to walk as fast as the water, and presently Meg had to stop to get her breath.

“I hear a kitty crying,” she said the next minute. “Listen, Bobby––don’t you hear a cat?”

But as noises often do, as soon as Bobby listened intently, the noise stopped. He couldn’t hear a thing and said so.

“There! Now don’t you hear it?” cried Meg. “It’s a little kitty and it must be lost. Oh, Bobby, we have to find it!”

Bobby could hear the kitten mewing now and he was as eager to find it as Meg was. But how could a kitten be in the brook?

“It’s back there!” Meg said, waving her hand toward the marshy land. “Maybe, if we call it, it will come.”

And together they called, “Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!” but the little faint “Meow” sounded just the same.

“Well, I’ll have to hunt for it,” declared Bobby, looking at the wet and soggy ground 149 rather regretfully. “I hope there aren’t any snakes in there,” he added gloomily.

Meg had a horror of snakes and she didn’t want her dearly loved brother to go where they might be. Neither could she go away and leave the kitten. So, like the brave and affectionate little girl she was, she said she was going with Bobby.

They hoped with all their hearts they wouldn’t see a snake and they didn’t know what they would do if they did, but they had no intention of leaving that forlorn kitty cat to its own fate. And, as sometimes happens, it turned out that they did not have to go where they dreaded to go at all.

“I see it!” cried Meg suddenly, her sharp eyes having searched the bank near them, where it jutted out into the water. “Look, Bobby, in that crooked tree, hanging out over the brook.”

Bobby looked. At the very tip end of the longest branch, there clung a tiny ball of dirty white which must be the kitten.

“Scared to death,” commented Bobby. “I don’t see how we can get it down: the more 150 I shake the tree, the harder it will dig its claws in. That’s the way cats do.”

But Meg was ready with a plan.

“You climb up the tree,” she told Bobby, “and I’ll stand underneath and hold my skirts out; you can pull the cat off and drop it down into my lap.”

That was easier said than done, as they both discovered the next minute. For one thing, the water sucked past the tree in a current that forced Meg to brace her feet wide apart to keep her balance. And when Bobby had climbed the tree, he found the limb wasn’t strong enough to bear his weight and he couldn’t crawl out to the cat.

“If I had a pole, I could push her off,” he shouted to Meg.

“Bend it down,” she called. “Bend the branch down and I’ll pick her off, Bobby.”

And, after one or two unsuccessful attempts to bend the branch down, that was just what they did do. Bobby managed to bend it within arm’s reach of Meg, who detached the little cat much as you pick a caterpillar off a leaf. Though 151 the cat stuck tighter to the branch than any caterpillar was ever known to do.

“You’re all right,” said Meg soothingly, putting the kitten in her dress and gathering it up like a bag. “Soon as you get home, you can have something to eat and you’ll feel much better.”

It was hard work, wading against the current, but they helped each other and by good luck reached the bush, just as they saw Jud starting out from the other side. Dot and Twaddles danced impatiently on the bank, but he had evidently told them to stay there, for they did not follow him.

“Jud! Jud!” called Bobby and Meg, beginning to do a dance of their own. “You don’t know what we found, Jud!”

“If I was you, I’d wait to do my prancing on, dry ground,” Jud advised them as he waded across. “It’s safer and drier.”

“Did Linda do the shirt? Is it mended?” Meg asked eagerly, when Jud was within easy talking distance.

“Mended tip-top,” announced Jud. “Buttons 152 all on, pocket sewed back, rip between the shoulders all fixed. Never saw a neater job.”

“Linda is good as she can be,” Meg said gratefully, holding her skirts with one hand and reaching for the shirt with the other. “Let’s spread it out just the way we found it.”

They draped the shirt as Meg insisted she remembered seeing it, Jud all the while staring curiously at the little girl.

“What are you holding in your skirt?” he asked when she gave him her free hand and they were ready to cross the brook.

“It’s a surprise,” Meg said mysteriously. “I want to surprise Dot and Twaddles. You’ll never be able to guess what it is, either, Jud.”

And just as she said that, her foot slipped.