“Doctor, I am afraid my shoulder is dislocated. I threw up my arm to ward off a falling plank, and it struck me.”
“Oh, I am so sorry!” cried Fair involuntarily, and the dark-blue eyes looked at her gratefully just as the doctor turned and exclaimed:
“Ah, that is too bad!” He pulled off the patient’s coat, and, after a quick examination, said: “Yes, it is true. Come, can you bear a hard wrench? Now, if some strong man will assist me,” and in a few moments it was all right, and Fair’s rescuer, very pale and with compressed lips, was assisted into his car.
“Oh, he is gone, and I have not even thanked him!” said poor, trembling Fair, who was leaning heavily on the arm of a strange woman, who had stopped with the crowd. But just then the young man’s grave blue eyes looked at her over the doctor’s shoulder. He was pressing a bill into the physician’s hand, and saying eagerly:
“My dear doctor, we are forgetting the young lady. Please assist her to the car, and I will take her home, if she will permit me.”
“Oh, I shall be so grateful,” sighed Fair, who was so weak and trembling that she felt unable to walk, yet knew that there was not even a nickel in her little purse to pay her car fare home. With a sigh of relief, she allowed the physician to place her in the elegant automobile by the side of her rescuer, and then she was alone with him, for the door closed, and a kind, musical voice was saying:
“Now, tell the driver your address, please, and he will take you home at once.”
Very timidly she named a cheap lodging house in a distant, humble street, and as she saw his start of surprise she instantly added, with a touch of bitterness:
“If it is too far out of your way, I can get out and walk, sir, as I am used to walking.”
She had quickly comprehended that he was rich and proud, and fancied that he might feel himself above her, hence her resentful speech, to which he answered, with a slight smile at her petulance: