Annie's mind began to wander. Something struck her gently on the
arm, and kept bobbing against her. She put out her hand to feel what it
was. It was round and soft. She said to herself:
"It's only somebody's heid that the water's torn aff," and put her hand
under Tibbie again.
In the morning she found it was a drowned hen.
At length she saw motion rather than light. The first of the awful dawn
was on the yellow flood that filled the floor. There it lay throbbing
and swirling. The light grew. She strained her eyes to see Tibbie's
face. At last she saw that the water was over her mouth, and that her
face was like the face of her father in his coffin. Child as she was,
she knew that Tibbie was dead. She tried notwithstanding to lift her
head out of the water, but she could not. So she crept from under her,
with painful effort, and stood up in the bed. The water almost reached
her knees. The table was floating near the bed. She got hold of it, and
scrambling on to it, sat with her legs in the water. For another long
space, half dead and half asleep, she went floating about, dreaming
that she was having a row in the _Bonnie Annie_ with Alec and Curly. In
the motions of the water, she had passed close to the window looking
down the river, and Truffey had seen her.
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