"What's this?" he flung out in mock severity. "See here, young lady, you must get into those clothes whether they happen to be the style or not! Little girls who get wet can't go to sleep in their clothes. Now I'll give you just ten minutes more and then if you are not a good girl——"
To her own dismay and to his Maria Angelina burst into tears.
"Oh, come now," said Barry helplessly. "You poor little dud——"
The sudden gentleness of his voice undid the last of the girl's control. She sobbed harder and harder as he sat down beside her and began to pat her shaking shoulders.
"You shan't do anything you don't want to," he comforted. "You're tired out, I know. But you'd be so much more comfy in these dry togs——"
"Oh, please, Signor, not those things. Do not make me. I will get dry——"
"You don't have to if you don't want to," he told her gently, looking down in a puzzled way at her distress. Her face was buried in a crook of her arm; her black hair streamed tempestuously over her heaving shoulders. "Come closer to the fire, then, and dry out."
He threw more wood upon the flames and piled on brush that shed a swift, crackling heat.
"Give that a chance at those wet clothes of yours," he advised. "Meanwhile we'd better wring this out," and with businesslike despatch he began gathering that dripping black hair into the folds of a Turkish towel. Very strenuously he wrung it.
"That's what I do for my kid sister when she's been in swimming," he mentioned. "She's at the seashore now—no getting her away from the water. She's a bigger girl than you are. . . . Now when you feel better suppose you tell me all about it. Did you say you came from Wilderness Lodge?"