Andrew gave her a venomous look, dipped his handkerchief in the water, and began clumsily to bathe the girl's brow. Her senses were already reasserting themselves. She put up her hands to her face: they fluttered nervously. Andrew caught one of them and held it between his own brown ones, noting that her wrists were red, almost bruised, creased in rough outline of the apple-tree's bark.
"Will you give me some water?" she asked.
Mrs. Morris brought a blue and white cup. Andrew, kneeling on the braided mat before the couch, slipped his arm under Judith and put the cup to her lips. She took a mouthful, and fell into a shivering fit of cold.
Mrs. Morris rose to this emergency. Ague was an old familiar friend; "shakes" had no terrors for her. In a moment she had found a thick coverlet and placed it over Judith.
"You stay by her," she said to Andrew, "and I'll make her a draught of hot elderberry syrup in two shakes."
Then she was off to the lean-to kitchen, and they heard her rattling among her kettles. Andrew still knelt upon the mat holding Judith's hand with praiseworthy absent-mindedness.
"Are you better now?" he asked.
"Yes," she said, her chin quivering as she tried to keep her teeth from chattering. "It was so good of you to take me down. So awfully good. I'm very stupid, but I couldn't help it."
"Of course you couldn't. I had a man who behaved much worse than you did in the same situation. Ever so much. Indeed, you behaved very well."
There was silence; then Judith began: "Mr. Cutler, I—er—called you a name to Mrs. Morris the other day."