Reed paused, with his hand on the carriage door.
“That’s Clark—Stanley Clark. You’ve heard me speak of him times enough,” he answered, wonderingly.
“Oh, Charlie, that is the boy that saved Nellie’s life. Don’t let him get away. Bring him here quick. I must speak to him.”
With a mixture of delight and amazement on his face, Reed raced after the two boys, and seizing Clark by the arm, cried:—
“Come, Clark, my mother wants to see you. You must come,” he added imperatively, as Clark held back, unwillingly. “I’ll tell you what it’s all about to-morrow, Hamlin”; and he began to pull Clark toward the carriage.
Clark knew why he was wanted, for he had recognized the two, but he would far rather have risked his life again than to have been marched up to that carriage. But there was no help for it, so he submitted with the best grace possible.
Mrs. Reed seized both his hands, and her eyes were dim as she said:—
“To think that it was you who saved my little girl, and all this time we have never suspected it! You must have seen our advertisements?”
“Oh, yes,” said Clark, looking mightily uncomfortable, “but I didn’t want any more thanks, you know. Any fellow would have done what I did on the impulse of the moment. If I’d stopped to think, I should probably have stood still.”
“Not a bit of it,” said Mrs. Reed promptly. “A boy who acted on such an impulse as you did, couldn’t be a coward. It is not in him. But step in; we’ll take you home. I must know where you live, for I want to call on your mother. I know she was proud of her boy that night.”