"It wasn't you," said Allan briefly, then straightway forgot everything else, as Phyllis' eyes opened.
"I'm dizzy," she said faintly. Then she saw Allan's face over hers, and farther away the others, grave and anxious, and she smiled. "Why, Allan, you poor boy, I've worried you to death. I'm—sorry—dear."
Her breath came a little hard for a moment, for it had been a bad fall; but she was nearly all right again in a few minutes more, and laughing.
"Allan, if you don't stop looking as if the world had come to an end, I shall faint again, whether I want to or not," she said. "You foolish man, didn't you ever see anything like that before?"
"The world nearly did come to an end," said Allan in a low voice.
She made no answer to this in words, but Joy saw her catch Allan's hand and hold it hard for a moment before the men helped her to rise to her feet. She was perfectly able to walk, she declared, after standing a moment and recovering from the dizziness that came over her for a moment when she got up. She went back to the house with Allan's arm around her, and the children, whom nobody had as yet taken time to scold, following, awestruck and very meek, at a safe distance behind.
"He did act as if the world had come to an end," mused Joy aloud. "I was frightened for a minute, though."
"You didn't show it. You were very brave and clear-headed," John told her comfortingly.... "I don't know that I'd have behaved very differently in his place. As he said, it wasn't I."
"Oh, was that what he meant?" said Joy. "I didn't quite know."
"Thank heaven it wasn't!" said John.