"Oh, what can I do," she cried, "how can I leave you alone in such pain? Ah!" as steps were heard approaching, "here is grandpa coming up in search of me."
She ran to meet him and told him what had happened.
He seemed much concerned. "Solon is here with the carriage," he said. "I was going to ask your company for a drive, but we will have him take Leland to Fairview first. Strange what could have taken him into that tree!"
That broken limb kept Lester Leland on his back for six long weeks.
His aunt nursed him with the utmost kindness, but could not refrain from teasing him about his accident, asking what took him into the tree, and how he came to fall, till at last, in sheer desperation, he told her the whole story of his love, his hopelessness on account of his poverty, his determination not to go back to Ion to be thanked by Elsie and her parents for saving her life, his inability to go or stay far away from her; and finally owned that he had climbed the tree simply that he might be able to watch her, himself unseen.
"Well, I must say you are a sensible young man!" laughed Mrs. Leland; "but it was very unromantic to be so heavy as to break the limb and fall."
"True enough!" he said, half-laughing, half-sighing, while a deep flush suffused his face.
"Well, what are you going to do next?"
"Go off to—Italy, I suppose."
"What for?"