“Four hours since you went down—you’re sure a wonder!” muttered Shank, patting my dripping shoulder.
I was embarrassed—a bit shocked—when the girl hurried to me and began to wipe away the blood with her little handkerchief. I tried to push away her hands. It didn’t seem right to have her do such a task. But she resisted me. She kept on.
“You poor boy!” she said—or I thought she said it; I was not sure. There was pity in her tones—a caressing kind of pity, such as comes right from a woman’s heart. I was astonished. She had been stiff and curt toward me—and was rather short with every one else, for that matter. She had never seemed tender even toward her own father.
But she murmured again in my ear, leaning close to me, “You poor boy!”
I’ll admit I was glad to hear her say it—I needed sympathy; but because I mention the girl and her little ways please do not jump at the conclusion that I was falling in love. She had overheard a declaration which established my standing with her and, I suppose, made her feel freer in my company. Oh no! I was not falling in love!
Sitting there as I did with forty pounds of lead on my feet and eighty pounds of it across my shoulders, with air in my dress puffing me out like a giant frog, dripping with brine, and hideous with blood-smeared face, I wasn’t much to look at in the way of a lover. And outside of the pity she had never by flicker of eyelid, or tone of voice, or touch of hand intimated that she was interested in me except as a young man who was tugging at a hard job and deserved a little encouragement.
“It’s all—all useless—down there—isn’t it?” she asked.
“No; it’s a glorious job, and I’ve just begun on it.”
“But it’s wicked for you to suffer like this.”
“I was never so comfortable and happy in all my life—never so full of courage.”