"Yes, a little."
"I'm awfully sorry!" (You see there is not much variety in his laments.) "What can I do for it? gallop home as hard as I can, and make them send the carriage?"
"With a doctor, a lawyer, and a parson in it? No, I think not."
"But you cannot sit here all night. Could you ride home, do you think?"
"On that dreadful beast?" with a horrified intonation.
"But if I lead her all the way?"
"Very well" (reluctantly); "but (brightening a little) I cannot ride her; she is not here."
"I suppose I must be going to look after her," says St. John, dragging himself up very unwillingly. "Brute! she is as cunning as Old Nick! And you are sure you don't mind being left here by yourself for a minute or two?"
"Not if there are no horses within reach," she answers, with an innocent smile, which he carries away with him through the sunshine and the fern and the grass.
Essie spends full half an hour pushing out, pinching in, smoothing and stroking Miss Blessington's caved-in hat; full a quarter of an hour in picking every grass and sedge and oxeye that grew within reach of her destroying arm; and full another quarter in thinking what a pleasant, manly, straightforward face St. John's is—what a thoroughly terrified face it looked when she met it within an inch of her own nose after her disgraceful bouleversement—what a much better height five feet ten is for all practical purposes than six feet four.