“I recollect now,” Polly faltered, without hearing him. “It was the last hoop. Jim seemed to have a hunch I was goin' to be in for trouble when I went into the ring. Bingo must a felt it, too. He kept a-pullin' and a-jerkin' from the start. I got myself together to make the last jump an'—I can't remember no more.” Her head drooped and her eyes closed.
“I wouldn't try just now if I were you,” Douglas answered tenderly.
“It's my WHEEL, ain't it?” Polly questioned, after a pause.
“Yoah what, chile?” Mandy exclaimed, as she turned from the table, where she had been rolling up the unused bandages left from the doctor's call the night before.
“I say it's my creeper, my paddle,” Polly explained, trying to locate a few of her many pains. “Gee, but that hurts!” She tried to bend her ankle. “Is it punctured?”
“Only sprained,” Douglas answered, striving to control his amusement at the expression on Mandy's puzzled face. “Better not talk any more about it.”
“Ain't anything the matter with my tongue, is there?” she asked, turning her head to one side and studying him quizzically.
“I don't think there is,” he replied good-naturedly.
“How did I come to fall in here, anyhow?” she asked, as she studied the walls of the unfamiliar room.
“We brought you here.”