“Oh, do do something else,” Christina cried pettishly, after a few minutes. “It’s so cold sitting here waiting for you to catch stupid fish that never come. Let’s go to the cave.” The cave was an old disused lime-kiln, where robbers might easily have lived.
“All right,” Roy said.
“I’ll get there first,” Christina called out, beginning to run.
“Bah!” said Roy, and ran after. They had raced for a hundred yards, when, with a cry, Christina fell. Roy, who was still some distance behind, having had to pack up his rod, hastened to Christina’s side. He found her looking anxiously into Diana’s face.
“Oh, Roy,” she wailed, “her eyes have gone!”
It was too true. Diana, lately so radiantly observant, now turned to the world the blankest of empty sockets. Roy took her poor head in his hand and shook it. A melancholy rattle told that a pair of once serviceable blue eyes were now at large. Christina sank on the grass in an agony of grief—due partly, also, to the knowledge that if she had not been naughty this would never have happened. Roy stood by, feeling hardly less unhappy. After a while he took her arm. “Come along,” he said; “let’s see if Jim can mend her.”
“Jim!” Christina cried in a fury, shaking off his hand.
“But come along, anyway,” Roy said.
Christina continued sobbing. After a while she moved to rise, but suddenly fell back again. Her sobbing as suddenly ceased. “Roy!” she exclaimed fearfully, “I can’t walk.”
Christina had sprained her ankle.