“I was frightened for a moment,” said Blanche, half apologetically, “but now I must thank you. Has Herty hurt himself? Where did you find him?”
Mr Dunstan did not at once reply; he was looking at the child, who had grown very white, and nearly fell.
“There now,” he said. “It’s all very well to be plucky, but I told you you couldn’t manage for yourself,” and he put his arm round the little fellow.—“Don’t be alarmed, Miss Derwent,” he went on; “it’s only slight, I think—a sprained ankle; but the pain would be worse if it were bad. He was chatting quite cheerfully as we came along just now. I think the best thing to be done is for me to carry him home, if you’ll allow me to do so.”
“Thank you, oh thank you so much,” said Blanche. “Our house is just on the other side of the gate. I will run on and open it. We are rather busy this afternoon—Lady Hebe’s girls are having tea in the garden, and I shouldn’t like my mother to be frightened. So perhaps if you can carry Herty straight to the house, that would be the best.”
“Certainly,” said Mr Dunstan, passing through the gate as she held it open. “It is unlucky that this should have happened when you’re all so busy.”
But his tone was remarkably cheerful in spite of his expressions of sympathy. And Herty, now comfortably ensconsed again on the young man’s shoulder, began his explanations.
“I was stretching up for a splendid spray of ivy,” he said. “There was a sort of ditch, and I lost my balance and rolled in. And when I tried to get up, my foot hurt me so, I couldn’t stand. So I had to lie down, but I shouted a lot. And at last, after ever so long, he came.—Wouldn’t it have been dreadful if you hadn’t?” he went on, patting Mr Dunstan affectionately: he had evidently taken a great fancy to his rescuer. “Do you think I’d have had to stay there all night?”
“It was lucky, indeed,” said Blanche. “There is a short cut through the woods from Alderwood to East Moddersham, isn’t there? You live at Alderwood, do you not? I suppose you were going to East Moddersham. You can go back the other way round if you like.”
She spoke quite simply, a little faster perhaps than was usual with her, thanks to her late excitement and present relief. But there was no sort of curiosity or arrière pensée in her questions.
What then—or was it her fancy?—what made the young man’s colour deepen slightly as she put them to him? She was almost sure it was so, though he was rather sunburnt, which made it more difficult to judge.