The man peered at her.
'What in hell are you doing here?' he asked.
'Walking home-along. She wouldna let me bide the night over. And my foot's blistered in a balloon and blood on my dress.' She choked with sobs.
'What's your name?'
'Hazel.'
'What else?'
With an instinct of self-protection she refused to tell her surname.
'Well, mine's Reddin,' he said crossly; 'and why you're so dark about yours I don't know, but up you get, anyway.'
The sun came out in Hazel's face. He helped her up, she was so stiff with cold.
'Your arm,' she said in a low tremulous voice, when he had put the rug round her—'your arm pulling me in be like the Sunday-school tale of Jesus Christ and Peter on the wild sea—me being Peter.'