"Where are you hurt, Margaret?" Boyd asked in sympathetic distress.
"I don't know; all over I reckon."
"Are any of your bones broken? Feel of them and see."
"I reckon not. I can't tell. The pains are all over me—mostly inside. I reckon I'm going to faint."
Boyd Westover was now seriously alarmed. He vaguely remembered hearing of persons dying of "internal injuries," though externally showing no hurt. Instantly he lifted the girl again and, mounting with her in his arms, set off at a gallop toward the great house at Wanalah.
The sharp prick of a pin, as he adjusted his burden on the withers, attracted his attention to the two flaming red bandana kerchiefs, pinned by their corners to Margaret's shoulders, and in the midst of his apprehensions for her life he found time to wonder why she had decorated herself in that extraordinary way. He was too full of anxious concern to question her on so trivial a matter, but she, recovering herself, volunteered an explanation, after asking him to reduce the horse's gait to a walk.
"I reckon I was right foolish," she said, laughing in spite of her pain. "You see this is one of old Aunt Sally's birthdays. She has one every three or four months now, and she's rapidly adding to her ninety years—a year at each birthday. She was my Mammy you know, and so I always take her a present on her birthdays."
The girl paused in her speech as some sharp twinge of pain changed her smile into a grimace. It was only for a moment, and she continued:
"On her last birthday, two or three months ago, she told me I would some day be an angel with red wings, and so when I set out this morning to take her these two turban kerchiefs, the foolish whim came to me to pin them to my shoulders and make red wings of them."
Again an access of severe pain silenced speech and she closed her eyes while her lips grew pale. Evidently the effort to chatter had been too much for her, and Boyd rightly guessed that she had been forcing herself to talk of her little prank by way of preventing him from saying more serious things which she did not wish just then to hear.