“He’ll be hurt!” she thought. “She’ll urge him to do all sorts of dangerous things! He’ll be killed! He’ll be killed, showing off!”
In another instant, regardless of the pain that made her sick and faint, Christine would have run out of the house and down the road, if she hadn’t heard Paul’s voice outside.
“Now, then!” he was saying. “Only a step more! That’s a brave girl!”
Christine threw open the front door, and there he was, supporting a partially collapsed Miss Banks up the steps. Christine forgot all her resentment at the sight of that limp, helpless figure. She forgot her own bandaged arm, forgot everything except the honest sympathy and kindness that made her what she was.
“Oh, you poor child!” she cried. “Is she badly hurt, Paul?”
Paul half carried Miss Banks in, and she dropped face downward on the sofa—a pitiful little figure, with her bright, disheveled hair and her slender body.
“The house,” he said solemnly, “is burned to ashes!”
“But Miss Banks—is she badly hurt?”
“She’s not exactly hurt,” said he, still solemn. “It’s more a nervous shock, I think.”
All sorts of curious things took place in Christine’s mind, but she said not a word. She watched Paul ministering to the nervously shocked one. She watched Miss Banks growing a little better, so that she was able to sob forth a catalogue of the marvelous things she had lost; but never a word did Christine say—not even when Paul sat down on a near-by chair, and wrote lists for the insurance company, dictated by Miss Banks with many sobs.