She glanced about her at the group of French faces, and she shook her head.
“I never can make them understand,” she objected. “I’d better go, myself.”
But, in his turn, Barth offered an objection.
“Oh, don’t go and leave me,” he urged a little piteously. “I might go off again, you know.”
“But you just said you couldn’t walk?” Nancy responded, in some surprise, for, granted that the stranger was able to remove himself, she could see no reason whatsoever that he should not feel free to do so.
“Oh, no. I can’t walk a step. My foot is broken,” he answered rather testily, as a fresh twinge ran through his ankle.
“Then how can you go off, I’d like to know.”
Barth stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then a light broke in upon his brain.
“Oh, I see. You don’t understand. I meant that I might faint away,” he explained.
Nancy’s reply struck him as being a trifle unsympathetic.