“Didn’t I–didn’t I t-tell you it was him?” burst forth Pem, with all the vehemence of a little spring torrent, in Una’s ear as she caught the ring of the chaffing voice which had railed at the Fates for “wishing a wreck on” to unoffending youth, and was so boldly challenging them now.
And just as free and frank in her girlish gratitude as that torrent bubbling impulsively out of the earth, when the nickum reached the crest again, she sprang forward, hand outstretched, to meet him. Her eyes, blue as the little fairy blossoms of the star-grass now, were breeze blown in the meadow of her gladness.
It was nothing–nothing not to know the name of one who had saved you from death, she thought.
By the rescue you knew him!
And he knew her!
Those eyes, those keen, girlish eyes which had looked through the spectroscope a hundred times, in her father’s laboratory, into the remote mystery of that far-away upper air could not be deceived.
By the sudden, startled heave of his shoulders, whose defiant shrug she remembered so well, by the quick intake of breath, as its climbing hiss sharpened to a whistle–almost a rude whistle in the excitement of the feat he had just performed–by the little stare of breathless surprise, of quandary, in his dark eyes, glowing like Una’s, he recognized her ... and passed her by.
Recognized her as the girl whose “pep” he had complimented for putting another’s life before her own–and didn’t want to have anything more in life to say to her!
Well! the Heavens fell upon the Pinnacle as Pem drew back–annihilated.
Snubbed for the first time in all her blue-sky life–and by a boy, too!