Page:St. Nicholas - Volume 41, Part 1.djvu/59

1913.] movements were deliberate; the threadings, and snippings, and tyings, and washings seemed to go on forever. Yet it was but a scant five minutes before the doctor had begun to cover the wound with cotton and with gauze. Then Nate, taking the basin from Harriet, led her out of the room, through the kitchen—where the other two looked at her in silent awe—and out into the open air.

“Sit down,” he said, pointing to a bench that stood beside the door. “Lean your head against the house.”

Harriet obeyed. It was a relief to sit down, a pleasure to rest her head. Wearily she closed her eyes. For a moment, the darkness was shot with golden streaks, her ears sang, and she felt as if she were falling infinitely far. Was she fainting? She felt very cold. Then suddenly her brain cleared, the singing stopped, and warmth returned to her. She opened her eyes, and, finding Nate watching her anxiously, was able to smile at him.

“Thet ’s all right!” he exclaimed with relief. “If you went off in a faint, you 'd bother me more than the boy. Here, girls. Water for Harriet. Keep her sitting here for a while, then go and get your horse.”

“I feel perfectly well,” protested Harriet. “Don’t waste a thought on me. I 'm all right.”

“Ten minutes on that bench!"” ordered Nate as he went into the house.

Fifteen minutes later, the girls were saying good-by. “A quiet afternoon to you, Harriet,” the doctor recommended. ‘“And don’t worry about this youngster. He ’s knocked out, of course, and he ’ll be weak. But you saved him, I think.” He went back to his patient.

Nate helped the girls into the carriage, and then spoke to Harriet. “Your mother ’ll want to come up and see about him, of course. I don’t object to that, but you tell her from me that she can’t take him home with her. I don’t mean to let a chap go that ’s chucked right into my arms, and, besides, I ’ve taken a fancy to him.”

The girls jogged slowly homeward. Harriet, holding the reins over her old horse, was content to let him take his own pace; she did not listen to her friends’ chatter, but fell into a study. The others, glancing at each other behind her back, nodded knowingly and giggled.

“She ’s thinking,” said Joanna, “how good-looking he was.”

Harriet, lost in thought, did not hear the silly remark. In the past hour, she had received ideas which her friends were not capable of grasping, but of which she began to see the meaning. The mystery of pain, a girl’s usefulness, these were in her thoughts.