"Oh no, I must get home. They have really dried on me. I can't stay here, you know. One disabled person is quite enough."
"You'll stay here till I come back. I'll ride off and get a car. This is a time when I regret not owning one. Ah! Here is Mrs. James. She'll see to you."
He explained matters. Mrs. James soon had Anstice's wet clothes off her and gave her some of her own to wear, whilst she set about drying hers. Justin went off, and the farmer went upstairs to sit by old Nixon.
"I can't think," said Anstice in a quavering voice, "why I feel so shaky. I suppose I must have lost more blood than I thought. I felt my arm dripping as I walked. I nearly collapsed on the way."
"You look awful, ma'am. Don't ye talk; the doctor will be here and he'd best look at your arm."
"I am thinking of poor Ellen Nixon. She is so bad, Mrs. James. One of the Watts girls has promised to sit up with her to-night. How can we get her a nurse? She must have one. It's severe bronchitis, she can hardly breathe. She's so bad that I doubt if she will notice her brother's absence, but of course she'll have to be told. Can you send her a message early in the morning to say where he is?"
"Don't you worry, ma'am; we'll do that the first thing."
"Ellen thought her brother had been detained in Penrith, but Watts at the inn told me he had left Penrith at twelve o'clock in the morning, and ought to have been back before he was. He said he was afraid he was having a business collecting his sheep. That was how—when I heard the insistent barking of his dog, that I knew something was wrong."
"I wouldn't talk if I were you," advised Mrs. James, noting the feverish flush coming into Anstice's cheeks. "Just you try and have a wink or two of sleep, afore the Squire coom back."
Anstice subsided. The doctor arrived before her husband. He was a long time with old Nixon. He had broken two ribs and dislocated his left wrist, otherwise he was sound. Then he examined Anstice, and had to put four stitches into her gashed arm.