“Is it a sprain? Does it hurt so much as all that?” Although Irene would doubtless—and justly—have been furious to know it, her concern was the one real factor in the incident.
“He may have slipped on that bolt of his back yonder.” Pape wasn’t used even to suggesting lies and his voice sounded as unconvincing to himself as though pitched from the vicinity of Washington Square. “Serve him right if he did. At that, I’m afraid our ride’s ended for to-day. Fortunately——” He paused in a search of the surroundings, presumedly to get their exact bearings; in fact, to convince himself that he had seen what he had seen. “Fortunately the stable I’m using lies just over there on Central Park West.”
“And I was just about to propose that we make the reverse round.” Irene pouted like the spoiled child she was. “I’d set my heart on a real sprint between my mare and your cocksure charger. It would have been so sort of symbolic of life to-day, you know—a race of male versus female.”
Her heart for horses, however, soon softened in pity for Polkadot. Pape liked her cordially as he hated himself for the endearments and consolations she showered upon that supposed unfortunate.
“Don’t you worry one little bit, Polkadot dar-rling,” she urged, leaning to one of the pinto’s forward-flicking ears. “If it isn’t all right by to-morrow-day, Irene will come around herself and rub it well for you.”
When Dot, having received no “cure” signal, limped more noticeably than before as they neared his stable-hostelry, she added in her sweet-lisped baby talk:
“Just a few steps more, booful boy. Don’t ‘oo care. You’ll be all well to-morrow-day.”
Considering the tenderness of her mood toward the four-footed fakir, her change was sudden and radical toward the biped of the pair when she grasped that he intended to send her home in a taxi.
“You’re not going to take me?” she demanded through the down-dropped sash of the door he had closed.
“If you’ll excuse me, no, Miss Sturgis. I am very sorry to miss the pleasure and sorrier if I seem discourteous. But I—I owe a duty to a friend.”