"I don't know why you should say 'poor boy,'" Isabel observed, rather fretfully. "He's not very ill if he can write letters. I'm sure I don't feel like writing any."
"I wasn't thinking of that," said Madame, half to herself.
"And as for his releasing me," Isabel went on, coolly, "I'm glad he was decent enough to do it and save me the trouble of releasing myself."
Rose got to her feet somehow, her face deathly white. "Do you mean," she cried, "that you would think for a minute of accepting release?"
"Why, certainly," the girl replied, in astonishment. "Why not? He says himself that he can't ask me to marry a cripple."
Rose winced visibly. "Isabel!" she breathed. "Oh, Isabel!"
"My dear," said Madame, with such kindness as she could muster, "have you forgotten that he saved you from death, or worse?"
"He didn't do anything for me but to tell me to jump. I did more for him than that. Nobody seems to think it was anything for me to get up out of the dust, with my best white dress all ruined and my face scratched and my ankle sprained and one arm bleeding, and help the Crosbys carry a heavy man to their machine and lay him on the back seat."
"I thought the Crosbys carried him," put in Madame. "They're strong enough to do it, I should think."
"Well, I helped. I had to take all that nasty raw meat out of the back seat and throw it out in the ditch to the dogs, and stand up all the way home, bruised as I was, to keep him from falling off the seat. We were in a perfect bedlam there for a while, but it doesn't seem to make any difference to anybody. Nobody cares what happens to me."