"Jake," she said with emotion, "I felt we would be safe as soon as you arrived. If you knew how I listened for the train and longed for your step! But the wretch has hurt you; your face is bruised and cut." Foster felt embarrassed, but laughed. "My face will soon recover its usual charm, and if it's any comfort, the other fellow looks, and no doubt feels, much worse." Then he turned to Lawrence, who sat near. "You have evidently been telling Miss Stephen a highly-colored tale."
"Lucy!" she corrected him. "I'm not going to call you Mr. Foster. You're our friend—mother's and mine—-as well as Lawrence's." She stopped and shuddered. "But you shall not make a joke of what you did! What might have happened won't bear thinking of. If you hadn't come in time!"
Foster, seeing her emotion, glanced at Mrs. Stephen, begging her to interfere, but her strained look indicated that her feelings harmonized with the girl's. Then Lawrence interposed with a grin—
"Jake always does come in time—that's one of his virtues. He's the kind of man who's there when he's wanted. I don't know how he does it, because he's not really clever."
"Lawrence," said Lucy severely, "sometimes you're not as humorous as you think."
"Then I hope I'm tactful, because you're making poor Jake feel horribly awkward. I believe he thought you wanted to kiss him and was very nearly running away."
Lucy blushed and Lawrence resumed: "He can't deny it; Jake, you know you would have run away! However, I knew what I was doing when I made him my partner some time ago. Jake has a romantic imagination that now and then leads him into trouble, but although it's perhaps as much luck as genius, when he undertakes a thing he puts it over. For example, there was the sawmill——"
Lucy stopped him with a gesture. "We are not going to talk about the sawmill. It was your—I mean our—troubles Jake plunged into, and pluck that can't be daunted is better than genius. But you're an English Borderer and therefore half a Scot; you hate to let people guess your feelings."
"Jake kens," said Lawrence, smiling. "Before very long you'll be a
Borderer, too."
Lucy's eyes were very soft as she turned to Foster. "Then I must adopt their customs. I think they have a motto, 'Dinna' forget.'"