'Gone up to the township,' she answered. 'What is the matter? Has anything happened?'
'Miss Sheilah has met with an accident out by Pelican Creek,' I answered. 'She thinks she has broken her leg. You had better send for the doctor and her father at once. In the meantime, I'll take the buggy and a mattress, if you will give me one, and go out and bring her in?'
At this moment Colin McLeod, with a face the colour of zinc, appeared from the house and stood staring at me.
'What's that you say?'
'Sheilah has broken her leg out yonder. I'm going with the buggy to bring her in. If you like you can come and help me lift her,' I answered, all my former animosity forgotten in this new and greater trouble.
'Come on,' he cried in a voice I hardly recognised. 'Are you going to stand talking all day?'
He ran into the yard as he spoke, and after giving a final instruction to Mrs Beazley, I followed, to find him leading a horse from the stable. Without a word I went to the coach-house and drew out McLeod's big tray buggy, took the harness from the peg and threw it down by the horse's nose, then back into the house again for the mattress Mrs Beazley was stripping off a bed for me. This I placed on the tray, and by the time I had done so the horse was harnessed and ready for putting in. Colin held up the shafts while I backed him to his place. By the time this was done the slip rails were down and I drove through. Then Colin sprang up beside me, and off we went across the plain towards the place where I had left Sheilah.
When we reached it we found her lying exactly as I had left her. Colin jumped down, ran to her side, and said something in a low voice that I did not catch. Without losing a second, I lifted the seat from its place and lowered it overboard; then I, too, jumped down and went towards the sufferer.
'How can we lift you, do you think, with the least likelihood of hurting you?' I asked.