In a moment she had done so, and had filled the manger with the still luscious grass, while climbing upon its front she had thrown her arms about the animal's neck and was assuring him, as she might a human being, that he had been sadly missed and would be most welcome home.
On his part the burro was fortunately silent, though his great, dark eyes looked volumes of affection, and he laid his big ears gently back to be out of Amy's way, while she caressed him. She smoothed his forelock, ran her fingers through his mane, patted his shaggy head, and told him that his "big velvet lips were the softest things on earth."
"Ahem!"
This remark, if such it could be called, fell upon Amy's ears so suddenly that she half tumbled backward from her perch upon the manger, and just saved herself by springing lightly down, or she thought it was lightly, until she wheeled and faced the intruder.
None other than Archibald Wingate, making a horrible grimace, and holding up one of his pudgy feet as if he were in great pain.
"Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn't know it was your foot, or you were you—I thought it was only the hay on the floor."
"Ugh! Great goodness! Umm. If you ever have the gout, young woman, you will understand how it feels to have anybody jump down full force upon your toes. Ouch! O dear! O dear!"
Amy had never been accustomed to seeing people make ado over physical suffering. She did not understand this man before her, and a thrill of distress ran through her own frame, like the touch of an electric battery.
"Oh, I am so sorry! I wouldn't have done it for anything if I had known. Can't I do something now to help you? Let me rub it or—or—lead you. You look—" In spite of her good intentions, the horrible contortions by which Mr. Wingate's countenance expressed his feelings affected her sense of the ridiculous, and she smiled. As instantly ashamed of the smile, she buried her face in her hands, and waited what would come next.
"Huh! Yes, you look sorry, of course you do, laughing at an old man after you've nearly broken his foot in two. Hmm. You're a sorry lot, the whole of you; yes, you are! O-oh!" Yet he, too, and in spite of himself, laughed; but it was at his own pitiful joke about his kinsmen being a "sorry lot."