Page:Frank Packard - The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.djvu/232

228 "Are you mad!" she shouted back at him. "Let me steer—do you want them to hit me!"

"No-o," said Jimmie Dale, in a queer singsong sort of way, and his head seemed to spin dizzily around. "No—I guess" He choked. "The paper—it's in—my pocket"—and he went down unconscious on the floor of the car.

When he recovered his senses he was lying on a couch in a plainly furnished room, and a man, a stranger, red, jovial-faced, farmerish looking, was bending over him.

"Where am I?" he demanded finally, propping himself up on his elbow.

"You're all right," replied the man. "She said you'd come around in a little while."

"Who said so?" inquired Jimmie Dale.

"She did. The woman who brought you here about five minutes ago. She said she ran you down with her car."

"Oh!" said Jimmie Dale. He felt of his head—it was bandaged, and it was bandaged, he was quite sure, with a piece of torn underskirt. He looked at the man again.

"You haven't told me yet where I am."

"Long Island," the other answered. My name's Hanson. I keep a bit of a truck garden here."

"Oh," said Jimmie Dale again.

The man crossed the room, picked up an envelope from the table, and came back to Jimmie Dale.

"She said to give you this as soon as you got your senses, and asked us to put you up for a while, as long as you wanted to stay, and paid us for it, too. She's all right, she is. You don't want to hold the accident up against her, she was mighty sorry about it. And now I'll go and see if the old lady's got your room ready while you're readin' your letter." The man left the room.

Jimmie Dale sat up on the couch, and tore the envelope open. The note, scrawled in pencil, began abruptly:

You were quite a problem. I couldn't take you home—could I? I couldn't take you to what you call the Sanctuary,