“Angels? What do you——? Oh, I see,” laughed the father.
“Yes, Mother says they just sweep down and keep us from bumping too hard. They do, don’t they, Daddy?” enquired the boy, seeking assurance in his father’s eyes.
“Why—ah—certainly they do. They got a wing in the way of that old stump sure enough. But are you all right now, old man? Any headache? Arms all right?’ Legs? Back? All sound, eh?” Paul, moving his various limbs in response to his father’s questioning, found them all entire, without bruise or fracture.
They all climbed to the grassy plot above, Paul refusing to be carried, and found waiting them only one little girl, her face showing dead white against the aureole of her bronze-gold hair.
“Hello, Peg,” grinned Paul. “Where’s Asa and Adelina?”
The little girl, looking very tiny in her riding breeches, gulped very hard once or twice, then rushing at Paul flung herself upon him in a storm of tears.
“Oh, Paul, they said you were dead,” she sobbed, clinging to him. “But you’re not! You’re not!”
“Oh, rot, Peg.” Paul cast sheepish eye round the group as he disentangled himself from the clinging arms. “Don’t be a silly. What’s a fling from a horse? Lots of chaps get that.”
The little girl drew away from him, hurt and ashamed, and went slowly toward her pony.
“Where are you going, Peg?” said Paul.