"Curse these country hamlets," said Lawrence. He could not carry her four miles, nor was she fit to walk so far: but to fetch help would mean an hour or so's delay. He went into the kitchen to filla tumbler from the pump, and found an iron wash-bowl in Clara Janaway's neat sink, and a kettle boiling on the hob beside a saucepan of potatoes that she had been cooking for dinner. Isabel sat up and took the glass from his hand.
"I'm so sorry," she murmured, raising her beautiful dark eyes in a diffident apology. "It was all my own fault." Lawrence slipped a cushion under her head and drew her gently down. "Oh, thank you! But please don't trouble about me. I do feel rather queer." Lawrence thought it probable. He had been bitten by a dog himself and knew how horribly such a wound smarts. "It was all so—so very dreadful. But I shall be all right directly.. Do go back to the others: I'm afraid poor Clara—oh! oh, Captain Hyde! What are you doing?"
"Set your teeth and shut your eyes," said Lawrence "it won't take long. Your beloved Billy wasn't a nice animal to be bitten by. No, he wasn't mad, but his teeth weren't very clean, and we don't want blood poisoning to set up. Steady now." He pressed his lips to her arm.
Isabel's hand lay lax in his grasp while he methodically sucked the wound and rinsed his mouth from her tumbler. He hurt her, but she had been bred to accept pain philosophically. "Is it done?" she asked meekly when he released her. "Not any more?"
"No, that's enough. Now for a drop of warm water." He bathed the wound thoroughly and in default of a better dressing bound it up with his own handkerchief. "I wish I had some brandy to give you, but there isn't a drop in the place. Your estimable friend appears to have been a teetotaller. I don't doubt he was a pattern of all the virtues.— But for that matter I couldn't give the child publichouse stuff.— Now, my little friend, if you'll lie quiet for five minutes, I'll see what's going on outside."
"Please may I have my skirt?"
"Your what?"
"My serge skirt."
It had not struck Lawrence till then that she was dressed in a white muslin blouse and a pink and blue striped petticoat. "Do you mean to say that was your skirt you gave me to tie up the dog's head in?"
"I hadn't anything else," said Isabel still more apologetically, and blushing—she was feeling very guilty, very much ashamed of the trouble she had given: "and you don't know how fond Ben was of Billy!"