“Look, Miss des Essarts!”
Merle did not want to look, but the thumb of Mark St. Quentin was thrust upon her.
“It is bad, isn’t it?” courteously.
Presently she was invited to look again; and again she took an intelligent interest. It was just sufficiently bad to spoil her entrée.
“I’m not saying much about it——”
“Let me tie it up for you,” quoth Peter suddenly, noting the other girl’s lack of appetite.
Peter produced a dainty square of lawn and lace. Peter bent her boyish halo of hair in deep absorption over the injured member. And both her own partner and the victim supplied all the obvious patter about the “healing touch,” and “it was worth while to have suffered,” and “some people have all the luck,” and (of course) “will you let me keep the handkerchief?”—unutterable meanings in the request.
“‘When pain and anguish wring the brow,’” Merle murmured to her plate, as a very flushed ministering angel raised her head from the act of mercy.
Peter tossed her a look of indignation, and afterwards waylaid her in the corridor: