He shifted himself and gazed at her in considerable perplexity.
'Do you know how I hurt my head?' he asked. 'I must have fallen as I was climbing up here. And how did you come here?'
'I was passing,' Sister Anne explained, 'and I saw you lying here. I waded out to you. The water was not as deep then. Now—'
She paused, and a look of fear and anguish grew in her dull eyes.
'You cannot swim?' asked the boy.
'Oh, no, no!' she answered, her head sinking on her breast.
'Yet you stayed here to help me when you might have got safe ashore if you had left me? Did you know that you would be caught by the tide?'
'I am old,' she answered; 'it must come to me before many years in any case. But you are so young. I could not leave you. Your mother—'
The boy looked at her a moment with shining eyes and flushing face. Then he rose cautiously, and tentatively flexed the muscles of his legs and arms.
'Will you take off your shoes?' he said gently.