Thoroughly frightened now, the boys, who could all swim, at first struck out for the shore, which was at some distance. Then, recalled to their senses by the cries of the girls, two of them turned back to their aid. Whether they would have reached the shore with their frightened and unmanageable burdens is uncertain, but, a tugboat happening to come along, they were all picked up and carried to a dock a mile or more below. There, after waiting a half hour, drenched and chilled all through, while the boys tried in vain to get a carriage,--for by this time it was very late,--the party took a street car, which carried them up town, but not near Stella's, and they had to wait another half hour at a crossing for another car. It was two o'clock in the morning before Lettie, with Stella and her brother, reached the house, a wretched, draggled-looking, and very cross party, all without hats,--for these had been lost in the river,--and Lettie, her fine silk dress a ruin, her delicate shoes a shapeless mass from which the water squirted as she walked. By breakfast time Lettie, who was a delicate girl, was in a high fever, and the doctor, who was hastily called in, decided that she was threatened with pneumonia. Lettie's mother was notified, and hurried down, and, bundled up in many wraps, Lettie was conveyed in an ambulance to her home and her own bed, where she remained for weeks, battling for her life, delirious much of the time, and living over in fancy the horrors of the day she had had her own way. Some weeks later, after her recovery, her mother, one morning, said quietly, "Lettie, let us count up the cost of your doing as you liked." Lettie trembled, but her mother went on. "There's your dress and hat and shoes ruined and lost in the river--consequently the loss of your visit to your Aunt Joe; there's your illness, which deprived you of the school-closing festivities; and the doctor's bill, which took all the money I had saved for our trip to the seashore this summer." She was going on, but Lettie, now thoroughly penitent, suddenly resolved to make a clean breast of all her losses, and have the thing over. "Oh, mother!" she cried, burying her face in her mother's lap, "that isn't all my losses; I must tell you, I can't bear it any longer alone," and then with sobs and tears she told the dismal story of the robbery. "Lettie," said her mother, "I knew all that the very day it happened. After you had gone to Stella's the policeman came to the house to see if you had told him the truth. When he told me what you had said I went to your room and discovered the loss." "Oh, mother!" cried Lettie, "I'll never--never"-- "If I had not learned it then," went on her mother, "I should have known it later, for in your delirium you talked of nothing else; you went over that fearful scene constantly. I feared it would really affect your reason." "Oh, mother!" cried Lettie, "you never told me!"