“Oh, no, I thank you. I don’t want anything.” And then the buzzing conscience started up and she said more cordially, “I see something hanging in a scrub oak over there that I am going to get.”
“Let me get it for you,” and the young doctor started to swing himself down the cliff to the ledge where Helen was standing.
Before he reached her, however, she had determined to make the attempt herself. It was not much of a jump for one as athletic as Helen. It was several feet below where she was standing and the gorge narrowed at that point, making little more than a step across to the opposite ledge.
She gave a flying leap and landed safely, clutching the scrub oak in whose branches the wallet was lodged. Dr. Wright reached the spot where she had been standing just as she touched the rock below. He could not help admiring her grace and athletic figure as she made the jump, although his heart was sore at her persistent unkindness to him. He did not want to find her attractive and determined to let this visit to the camp be his last. She seemed to think that he had courted the power of attorney that had been thrust upon him, or why should she have said whatever she had said that had caused Bobby’s prattling? It was thoroughly ungenerous of her and unkind and he for one was not going to place himself in a position to have to endure it. The other members of the family were so very nice to him that he did not relish letting the summer go by without visiting them again—and Bobby—dear little shover. He could but confess, however, that their kindness was outweighed in his heart by Helen’s unkindness, and he determined to stay away.
A second after Helen had made her triumphant leap, she gave a sharp cry. Dr. Wright started toward her and his keen gaze saw an ugly snake gliding away across the rocks, disappearing in a crevice.
“My God, Helen! Did he bite you?” No bitterness now was in the young man’s heart as he jumped the chasm and landed by Helen’s side, just as she sank trembling to the ground.
She said afterwards it was not because it hurt so much, only for a moment was the pain intense, but she felt a kind of horror as though the poison had penetrated her very soul. She was filled with fear that could only have been equalled by Susan’s dread of hants.
“Where is it?” the doctor questioned with a voice of such sympathy and tenderness that Helen’s thoughts went back to a time in her childhood when she had her tonsils removed. When she came from under the anesthetic, her father was holding her hand and he spoke to her in just such a tone.
“My heel! Just above the shoe!” she gasped.