“I don't suppose you were bullying ME this time,” he said, “but you were YOUR HORSE—or it wouldn't have happened. Are you hurt?”
She tried to move; he offered her his hand, but she shied from it and struggled to her feet. She took a step forward—but limped.
“If you don't want my arm, let me call a Chinaman,” he suggested.
She glared at him. “If you do I'll scream!” she said in a low voice, and he knew she would. But at the same moment her face whitened, at which he slipped his arm under hers in a dexterous, business-like way, so as to support her weight. Then her hat got askew, and down came a long braid over his shoulder. He remembered it of old, only it was darker than then and two or three feet longer.
“If you could manage to limp as far as the gate and sit down on the bank, I'd get your horse for you,” he said. “I hitched it to a sapling.”
“I saw you did—before you even offered to help me,” she said scornfully.
“The horse would have got away—YOU couldn't.”
“If you only knew how I hated you,” she said, with a white face, but a trembling lip.
“I don't see how that would make things any better,” he said. “Better wipe your face; it's scratched and muddy, and you've been rubbing your nose in my strawberry bed.”
She snatched his proffered handkerchief suddenly, applied it to her face, and said: “I suppose it looks dreadful.”