There she lay shivering with pain and fear, with her eyes shut, for she heard the soft swish of long garments through the undergrowth. Then a shadow fell upon her, and she was lifted up into a pair of strong arms, while a voice that even her excited imagination could not construe as unkindly exclaimed:
“I do believe I frightened you, and I’m awfully sorry. I don’t suppose you ever saw such a funny frock before!”
There was something human and disarming about the “awfully” and “funny frock”; moreover, the owner of the voice did not hold her as though she were a captive. He sat down at the foot of the big tree whose gnarled roots had tripped Maggie up, and set her on his knee. Besides, the voluminous flannel garment had a most reassuring and workaday smell of soap. But she could not bring herself to open her eyes just yet. She screwed them and her courage up very tight, and whispered:
“I’ll no recant! Ye may burn me, but I’ll no recant!”
The big, queer man threw back his head and laughed, and his laugh was even more inspiring of confidence than his speaking voice. But he pulled himself up short in the very middle of his laugh to ask:
“I say, though, did you hurt yourself when you fell?”
Maggie opened her eyes the tiniest little bit, and for the first time saw this queer man’s face. It was a kind face, a handsome face, with large merry brown eyes and an exceedingly straight nose. His mouth was well cut and firm, and when he smiled as he did then, he showed two rows of admirably white and even teeth. And the good smell of soap was in no way deceptive, for there was about this queer man’s appearance a radiant cleanliness that was by no means merely physical. All this did Maggie gravely take in through half-shut eyes, and though the pain in her ankle was horrible, and her heart still danced a sort of breakdown against her ribs, she was no longer afraid—only very, very curious.
The queer tall man, looking down at the face resting against his arm, noticed that it was small and white, with long-lashed closed eyes set rather far apart, and that the little freckles looked pathetically prominent across the thin small nose; and even as Maggie was comforted by the good smell of clean flannel, so he recognized approvingly that he held in his arms a very clean little girl, even though her pinafore was patched and her shoes worn at the toes.
“Are you hurt, you poor mite?” he asked again.
For answer Maggie stuck out the painful foot, and behold! there was a big lump on the ankle, and it looked twice as big as the other one.