Rupert laughed and held out his hand.
"Don't think twice about it," he said heartily. "I am very glad you did stop the car, and very glad we were able to save so much time for you. I hope the doctor will pull your patient well through the illness." His hand closed over Christina's small one, the blue-eyed man likewise shook her by the hand, and before the door bell of the doctor's house had been answered, the car had whirled out of sight.
"Poor little girl, she was very prettily grateful," Rupert said to his companion. "I wonder whose illness she is agonising over. Plucky thing to do, stopping us as she did."
"She is a young woman of resource," the other answered. "I like that sort of 'git up and git' way of tackling a difficulty. Now, in her place, I should have just begun to think what might have happened if I had stopped somebody's car, by the time the car was two miles further down the road."
"My dear Wilfred, you hit your own character to a nicety," Rupert answered with a laugh; "but it's only your confounded laziness of mind that prevents your being as much on the spot as that little green-eyed girl."
"Very fetching eyes, too," Wilfred mused aloud, "and a smile that she ought to find useful. Can't we come back this way to-morrow, old man? We might find she wanted some errand done in the opposite direction, and I'll keep a sharp look-out for her all along the road!"
"As it happens, I have every intention of coming back this way," Rupert answered drily, "though not in order to enable you to rescue distressed damsels. You were not intended for a knight-errant, my good Wilfred; leave well alone. But I am bound to come back through Graystone. I promised Cicely that on my way home from Lewes, I would look in on Baba and her new nurse. They are lodging at old Mrs. Nairne's farm, and it's somewhere near Graystone village. Cicely wants to know whether the new nurse is all she should be; we will look in upon them on our way back."