“Your friend?” repeated the carpenter. “I declare, it’s that tramp that went by here just now!”
“Oh, no, sir! he isn’t a tramp,” declared Carolyn May firmly.
“Why ain’t he, I sh’d like to know?” grumbled Mr. Parlow, coming gingerly forward.
“Why, if he were, Prince wouldn’t have anything to do with him,” was the little girl’s assured reply. “This gentleman is hurt, Mr. Parlow.”
Mr. Parlow made a clucking noise in his throat when he saw the blood.
“Guess you’re right, Car’lyn May,” he admitted. “Call Mandy. She must see this.”
Miss Amanda’s attention had already been attracted to the strange arrival. She ran out and helped her father raise the injured man from the sled. Together they led him into the cottage.
He was not at all a bad-looking man, although his clothing was rough and coarse. His hands were big and square, with blunt fingers, and the fingers were half-crooked, or half-closed, all the time. Afterwards Carolyn May learned this was because the old man was a sailor and had pulled on ropes so many years.
The trained nurse and her father helped the man to the couch, after removing his pilot coat. Miss Amanda brought warm water and bathed the wound, removing the congealed blood from his face and neck.
“I think there should be a stitch or two taken in this,” she said, “but Dr. Nugent is a long way off. I can dress it all right and bind it up. But if it was sewed, the wound would not leave so bad a scar.”