“But if we have to get the doctor?”
“I forgot the doctor,” Jean admitted gloomily. “He’s a magistrate himself: he’d simply have to tell. Well, we’ve done our best, Jo: we can’t do any more. And look here: we’d better tell Father at once, for he’ll have to be brought up to the house before dark, and Sarah couldn’t do it—Father would have to help.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Jo said. “There’s Father, coming across from the lucerne patch. Let’s go and tell him.”
Mr. Weston heard their story in utter astonishment.
“Well, if you aren’t the most amazing twins!” he ejaculated. “And I was assuring a very hot policeman at Reedy Creek, only this morning, that no strangers had been out our way! I’ll go down at once. No, I’m not angry: I don’t see what else you could have done. Tell Sarah to get a room ready, but don’t say anything to your mother: she isn’t well enough to be worried. Do you think we can move him on a pony?”
“I don’t know,” Jean said. “But if you can’t, how can you?”
“That’s just what I don’t know: we can’t get a buggy down to that corner.” He thought for a moment. “Look, Jean: send Sarah out here to me, and you go on getting the room ready. I’ll need Sarah’s help to lift him. Jo, get Merrilegs and bring him down to the hut. You’d better go first: I don’t want to startle the poor wretch.”
So it was that Mrs. Weston, moving restlessly about the garden, caught sight of a queer little procession: Jo, slowly leading the grey pony, on whose bare back was a white-faced young man with his head tied up in a sock, and one foot curiously wrapped in its fellow. On one side her husband supported him, and on the other, Sarah: he wobbled rather painfully between them.
“It’s all right, Mother darling,” said Jean’s voice behind her. “It’s only our prisoner!” She explained briefly. “And oh, Mother!—do you think we’ll have to give him up to the police?”
“I don’t see how we can get out of it,” her mother said. “But the main thing is, to get him better. Poor fellow! what a dreadful day he must have had!” She hurried to the verandah to meet him, all her weariness forgotten.