“Will you do something for me?” she asked. As she lay, with her head turned from him, the warm white curves at the back of her neck appealed to him more irresistibly than ever.
“Anything!”
She thrust one hand down under the folds of her skirt, drew out something heavy and shining which had lain there, and put it into his hand. Then she buried her face in the pillow. “Please——” she began—and could not finish.
Jarvis looked around at his landlady, standing by like the embodiment of propriety. He turned again to the girlish figure shaking with its passionate regret. Then he took the little revolver from her, bent and whispered, “I understand,” and went quickly and silently away.
When Jarvis returned to Joe Hempstead, getting ready the flat drag known in country parlance as a “stone boat,” his first words were eager.
“Joe, I don’t know that there’s the slightest hope of saving the mare, but I’d like to bring her home and try. It was out of the question to look her over much there. She went down on her knees—smash—and one leg was certainly broken below the knee. But I’ve a hope the leg I couldn’t get at may only be bruised.”
Joe nodded. “We’ll do the best we can by her—for the little girl’s sake,” he declared. “She’s a high-spirited young critter—the human one, I mean—but I guess she’s a-takin’ this pretty hard, and I’d like to help her out.”
So presently brown Betty, lifting dumb eyes full of pain at the sound of a caressing voice, found herself in the hands of her friends.
“Well—it’s a question, Joe,” said Jarvis, slowly, ten minutes later. He was sitting with a hand on the mare’s flank, after a thorough and skillful examination. Betty’s head lay in Joe’s lap, held firmly by hands which were both strong and tender. “It’s a question whether it wouldn’t be the kindest thing to end her troubles for her. I expect she’d tell us to, if she could talk. She’ll have to be put in a sling, of course, and kept there for weeks.”