“What do you suppose is the matter with him, Jibby?” Sin demanded.
Stella gave a long, searching look ahead and calmly answered:
“There’s a man lying down under that tree.”
“A man! Oh, Jibby! what shall we do? Hadn’t we better run home as fast as we can?”
“Let’s go a little nearer and see who it is, first,” suggested the other, suiting the action to the word.
“It’s a tramp, or somebody dreadful, I know,” Sin declared, but she would not desert her friend, and both girls, escorted by the cringing Sir Walter, drew near to the prone figure of a poorly dressed, black-bearded man, whose hat, stick and bundle lay at his side.
“How perfectly horrid he looks!” Cynthia shuddered under her breath. “It’s a tramp or a nasty peddler, and he’s either drunk or asleep. For goodness’ sake, Stella, don’t go any nearer!”
“He looks sick to me … and hungry … and out of work,” her friend pitifully declared. “Perhaps he hasn’t any place to go. He can’t hurt us, and Scotty would protect us, anyway. (Down, sir!) Get some water, quick, Cynthia! he’s had a sunstroke or something,” and she bent over the “horrid man” and loosened his coarse shirt at the neck, moistened the livid face with the tin cup of cold water that Cynthia hastened to fetch, and fanned him with her broad-brimmed hat.
When in a few minutes he came to himself, he was barely able to speak, and that in a broken sort of lingo that the girls could make little of, but dog-like gratitude looked out of the lusterless black eyes. Stella’s strong young arms helped to raise him to a more comfortable position, and Cynthia knelt down and eagerly fed him bits of bread-and-butter from her lunch-box.
“Go to Uncle Si, please!” directed Stella. “He will know what we ought to do. I shall stay here, with Sir Walter to take care of me, till you come back.”