“Nonsense! I’m not so weak as all that. Where is my car?”
“At the bottom of the lake, I guess.”
“And yours?”
“By its side—or perhaps underneath or on top of yours. We all went in together.”
Her eyes—deep-violet eyes they were, as Stanley Downs saw—were wide open by this time, and it was clear that her mind was working in orderly fashion, no matter how distressed she might be physically.
“I am too heavy for you to carry,” she persisted. “You are badly hurt. There is a great cut in your forehead. Put me down!”
“You don’t weigh much,” he laughed. “It steadies me to carry you. A hundred pounds or so in my arms is what I need to keep me balanced.”
“I weigh a hundred and thirty!” she burst out indignantly. “I may not be very big, but I play tennis and I swim as well as——”
“And drive a six-cylinder Fanchon,” threw in Stanley. “That keeps you in good condition. Yes, I understand that. But when a young lady is hurled out of a car into a lake, and especially when she has some little difficulty in getting clear of the wreckage, she must expect to feel a little shaken.”
“You threw that door of the car open just before we went over the wall,” she remarked with a smile. “That showed you had not lost your head. But for that I might not have got clear. I wonder you thought of it—so quickly.”