"Yes, it is a lovely day," she replied, in answer to his salutation. "Is your mother at home? And what in the world is the matter with your face?"
He was holding open the gate for her to pass, and she saw that it would be absurd any longer to ignore his appearance.
"The calf got mixed up in the rose-bush, and while I was getting him out he kicked me," explained Bob, glibly, shamelessly loading upon the back of a tiny and unoffending little bull-calf nibbling in front of the door the burden of his scratched and bruise-stained countenance.
Sydney averted her eyes as he told this unblushing lie, and sighed again as she thought of the poor mother, for she knew how long a Carolinian can stay on a horse, and that Bob must have been bad, indeed, to have rolled off, as it was evident that he had done.
"You must let me do it up for you," she said. "Go and get me the witch-hazel and something for a bandage."
She sat and waited for him in the living-room, where modern taste had made use of the blue-and-white homespun coverlets of the Doctor's grandmother as door curtains and couch covers. She noticed the kettle swung over the fire from the same crane that had balanced its burden thus for a hundred years, and she listened to Bob knocking about up-stairs in the room over her head.
"Now, sit down," she cried, when he returned. "You're so dreadfully tall. Towels! That won't do at all! Here, I'll wet my handkerchief and put that on first."
"May I keep it?"
Bob's good eye twinkled merrily, and what was visible of the other showed some amusement.
"Of course not. You'll return it to me as soon as you can."