His tone was so serious and so hurt that she paused.
"And"—with the seriousness electrified by a glance that sought for mutual understanding—"and we are to forget about that duel and the whole hero-desperado business. I am a prospective settler who just arrived this afternoon. I came direct to headquarters to inquire about property. The Doge not being at home, won't you show me around?"
Again he had said the right thing at the right time, with a delightful impersonality precluding sentiment.
"I couldn't be unaccommodating," she admitted. "It is against all Little
Rivers ethics."
"I feel like a butterfly about to come out of his miserable chrysalis!
Haven't you a walking-stick? I am going to shed the crutches!"
She became femininely solicitous at once.
"Are you sure you ought? Did the doctor say you might? Is the wound healed?"
"There isn't any wound!" he answered. "That is one of the things which we are to forget."
She brought a stick and he laid the crutches on the porch.
He favored the lame leg, yet he kept up a clipping pace, talking the while as fast as the Doge himself as they passed through one of the side streets out onto the cactus-spotted, baking, cracked levels.