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My! how he ran! He was in such a fright that he did not once glance back. My, oh, my! Here he was running along in his bare skin; while his clothes, wet as wet could be, were lying down there among all those elegant ladies!

And home was a good way off; first through the forest, then along the stone wall, and all across the Karine place, where everybody could see him. How disgusting! Where Eric was, or even which way he had gone in the woods, Johnny had no idea.

From the wharf below came the sound of laughter. How those ladies were laughing and shouting! He could not see them because of the trees, but the talk and laughter was incessant.

He threw himself down behind a wild rosebush. They would probably sail away soon and then he could go down after his clothes. Pretty lucky to have got away from that cross merchant! Eric had always said he was an awfully cross man.

A long time Johnny lay there and all the while the sound of talk and laughter floated up to him, so he knew that the picnic party must still be on the wharf. The wind began to blow harder; it blew colder, too, horridly cold in fact, and he felt almost frozen. Shivering and with his teeth chattering, he crept back a little way toward the wharf and gazed down from behind a tree trunk.