Page:Melbourne and Mars.djvu/89

Rh little service I rendered them; besides it would be cruel to go away without enquiring about the old man's hand, he must have had a terrible night of pain with that smashed member. Does fate hang on these little things?

'Good morning, Helen, I hope you are not injured by the severe experiences last evening.' These common-place words I managed to get out someway and then I became silent, I had approached to within a few feet of her and got the first glance of her eye and the first fair look at her face. So far she had not spoken but she just glanced at me and her eyes dropped and her face changed color.

'Thank you, I am quite well; we have all to thank you that we are not dead in the snow this morning. Father is in great trouble and pain. Dr. Simmons is with him and she says he will have to undergo amputation, some of the bones in the wrist being completely pulverised.'

While speaking about her father she became quite natural again and looked a very pleasant, winsome, and happy girl of about nine years of age. The Martial women are all beautiful and well proportioned. To say that Helen Vance is beautiful is but to utter a platitude. She is fair, her eyes are blue, her hair has plenty of golden sunshine in it; not, red, but rich gold, fine, bright, and full of rippling wavelets and curly masses.

Her eye is a puzzle to me. It seems to be looking at something faraway in the distance one moment and the next it has a deep pleading beauty like that seen in some well-bred and superior animals. I have seen it before and I have heard that voice before sometime, somewhere. Bodily she may be a stranger to me, but there is something familiar in those two great soul revealers; the eye and the voice.

'Is your father unwilling to have the hand removed? It may be a question of life and death in a few days, perhaps hours. He must be already much weakened through the shock and what he has suffered since.'

'Quite true; but he thinks that if he could get to the metropolis early he might have the powdered bones taken out and replaced with silver; there are such wonders in surgery performed in these days.'

'We can have him in the metropolis in two days or very little more if that is all. I can take you and your father; and Fred Hurley can bring your brother; but we cannot travel night and day at this season of the year. We cannot go much more than a thousand miles a day.'

'How kind you are,' said Helen, 'our own boat might be made to serve, however. My brother says it is not disabled; that it only had to stop because its power was spent. If you would let my brother have your boat he could half fill our accumulators and bring both back, one at once. We then could return as we came.'

I did not relish this idea; I wanted, to take the sufferer and his daughter myself. I could send for Fred to help with the boat. 'Perhaps I had better see your father; mine is a new government boat and very powerful; if your