“It might have happened to you!” she reproached.
“Well, it might,” Reid allowed, after some reflection. “Sure, it might,” brightening, looking at her frankly, his ingenuous smile softening the crafty lines of his thin face. “Well, leave him to Rabbit and Dad; they’ll fix him up.”
“If he isn’t better tomorrow I’m going for a doctor, if nobody else will.”
“You’re not goin’ to hang around there all the time, are you, Joan?”
Reid’s face flushed as he spoke, his eyes made small, as if he looked in at a furnace door.
Joan did not answer this, only lifted her face with a quick start, looking at him with brows lifted, widening her great, luminous, tender eyes. Reid stroked her horse’s mane, his stirrup close to her foot, his look downcast, as if ashamed of the jealousy he had betrayed.
“I don’t mind the lessons, and that kind of stuff,” said he, looking up suddenly, “but I don’t want the girl––oh well, you know as well as I do what kind of a deal the old folks have fixed up for you and me, Joan.”
“Of course. I’m going to marry you to save you from work.”
“I thought it was a raw deal when they sprung it on me, but that was before I saw you, Joan. But it’s all right; I’m for it now.”