ourselves bumping up and down in uncomfortable juxtaposition with the rotting logs that comprised it, while I screamed out the information to Mrs. O'Brady, who had hastily arrived on the scene.
Whether she mistook the drift of my remarks, or not, I cannot say, but I saw rather than heard her issue command to the biggest of the four bare-legged O'Brady offspring, that had followed her to the "slip" to see what was going on. In less time than it takes to relate, bare-legs No. 1 (who rejoiced in the grandiloquent title of Aubrey) reappeared with a wriggling, fuzzy-wuzzy, brown ball in her arms which was immediately seized by her active mother and unceremoniously dropped into our skiff during one of the lunges which lifted us high up against the log.
"But we decided after all that wouldn't—" I began.
But Mrs. O'Brady was forehanded, giving us a vigorous "send-off" from the shore, she shouted,
"Take 'im along wid ye, anyhow, an', if yeh don't want 'im, yuhs c'n bring 'im back."
There seemed nothing for it under these agitating circumstances but to obey her in-
