“Why couldn’t you have knocked down some drunken rotter?” asked Noel, walking about the room with his hand in his pocket. “Why pick out Chip?”
Strange how the name had made itself at home with both of them!
“Why? Oh, Noel, I can’t bear it to be true! Haven’t we dreamt it all? If anything happens to him——”
“If only there are no beastly consequences,” said Noel, frowning, ”you may have done everybody a good turn in the end. I mean—he seems such a decent sort—I like him. And I think he might like us.”
Judy nodded.
“But I’m afraid it’s concussion, Noel.”
“It may be only very slight. Well, we’ll know in a few minutes. There was a terrible bump on his forehead, but we couldn’t find any other marks.”
“Suppose we’d killed him!” It wasn’t like Judy to suppose ghastly possibilities. “If I hadn’t gone to the club to pick you up,” she mused, “if I’d gone straight home, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“Oh, hush, Judy! What’s the good of all that? Look here”—he paused in front of her—“Chip evidently isn’t well off. I intend to arrange with the doctor, about bills. So you back me up, won’t you?”
“Of course. I’d thought of that too. And Noel——”