A woman rushes out, and takes her bleeding son from the stranger's embrace.
"He has been hurt," explains Eleanor faintly. "I carried him up the hill."
"Oh, you good soul!" cries the grateful mother, feeling her son's arms and legs; "and you're just as done up as can be. Come in, you poor young thing, and I'll give you a drink of Zoo to pull you round."
"No, thank you, I don't want anything. I am better now; but let me help you with the boy. We had better get his things off, and wash the wounds."
Together the two women tend the child. His leg is strained, not broken, and they put him to bed and watch him till he falls into a restless sleep.
Then their eyes meet, and the mother holds out her hand to Eleanor.
"God bless you!" she says; "if anything had happened to Tombo we should have broken our hearts. He is our only child."
Eleanor has recounted the history of the accident, leaving her share in the background, and making as light of it as possible.
She thinks, as she looks at the white woman, with her fair hair and sandy eyelashes, that something in the face brings an indistinct memory to her mind.
She glances curiously around the hut, adorned by the heads of animals.