“Well, you better lie still,” counselled Miss Baker tartly. “Dear me! I little thought when I took charge of you young ladies that any such thing would occur.”
“She acts as if she thought we did it on purpose,” said Alexia, turning her face over to hide it on Polly's arm again, and wishing her own needn't ache so dreadfully. “Oh dear! such a time as we've had, Polly Pepper, with those dreadful Briggses,—I mean Mrs. Briggs,—and now to be all banged up, and this cross old thing to see us home! And now I never'll be able to get through the term, 'cause I'll have to stay at home with this old arm, and aunt will scold.” She was quite out of breath with all her woes.
“Oh, yes, you will,” cried Polly reassuringly, “I'll run over every day, and study with you, Alexia. And you'll soon be all well again. Don't try to talk now, dear,” and she patted the poor cheeks, and smoothed her hair. All the while she was trying to keep down the worry over the home-circle who would be thrown into the greatest distress, she knew, if news of the accident should reach their ears.
“Can't somebody telephone them?” she cried; “Oh, Miss Baker”—the doctor had rushed off to other possible sufferers—“and tell them no one is hurt;—I mean seriously?”
“There is,” said the governess, quite calmly; “a man has been killed.”
“Oh dear!”
“A brakeman,” Miss Baker hastened to add. “Don't be frightened. None of the passengers.”
“Now I know he was brave, and trying to do something to save us,” cried Polly, with kindling eyes.
“Yes,” said a passenger, coming up to their group, “he was running back with a lantern to signal the train, and he slipped and fell, and the express went over him. But it stopped just in time for us.”
“Oh the poor, poor man!” Polly was quite gone by this time, and Alexia forgot her pain in trying to comfort her.