“Where is it?”
“My ankle.”
“Sprained?”
“Broken, I am afraid.” Barth’s answers still were brief; but now it was the brevity of utter meekness, not of arrogance.
“Oh, I hope not!” she exclaimed. “You can’t walk at all?”
Gritting his teeth together, Barth struggled up into a sitting posture.
“I am afraid not. It was foolish to faint; but I hit my head as I went down, and the blow knocked me out.”
As he spoke, he bent forward and tried to reach the laces of his shoe. With a swift gesture, Nancy forestalled him and deftly slipped the shoe from the swollen ankle. Her quick eye caught the fact that few of her friends at home could match the quality of the stocking within. Then her glance roved to his necktie, and she smiled approvingly to herself. In her girlish mind, Barth would pass muster.
Nevertheless, there was nothing especially heroic about him, as he sat there on the gravel with his ankle clasped in his hands and the color rising and dying in his cheeks. A man barely above the middle height, spare and sinewy and without an ounce of extra flesh, Cecil Barth was in no way remarkable. His features were good, his hair was tawny yellow, and his near-sighted eyes were clear and blue.
“Where can I find a surgeon?” he asked, after a little pause.