Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/59

60 young man. "Now cut along down and open the shutters in the dining-room. No, the kitchen will be best. Yes—you can take the candle."

He had Jane in his arms by now—quite easily, for Jane was thin and slight.

It was no fine figure of a woman that he laid on the long kitchen table, but a small, slender, brown-haired person with a white, sharp-chinned, elfish face, which she instantly covered with an arm.

The young man took off his coat and rolled it up and laid it under her head.

Then, very matter of fact, "Which foot?" he said.

"The other one," said Jane, kicking slightly with the uninjured leg.

He took off her shoe and felt the ankle. "Oh, don't!" said Jane. But he took no notice. Presently he said:

"No bones broken, thank goodness. Now look here," he went on; "there's a copper full of hot water in here—the char was charing. Get a basin or something on this chair, and bathe her foot—as hot as you can bear your hands in it. Keep on with that, and don't let the water get cold. I'll go and get some brandy and a carriage."

"I'm all right," said Jane. "I don't want brandy—I hate brandy."

"Go ahead with the hot water," he said to Lucilla. "Yes, that's the scullery in there. But I've just thought . . ." He pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket. "There might be something in the cellar—it's just worth trying."

"Anyhow, we haven't stolen anything," Lucilla comforted herself as she lifted pails and jugs and copper-lids. "If he steals things out of the cellar he can't have the face to give us up to justice."

She had set a clean pail of hot water on a chair augmented by a hassock, had got Jane's stocking off and was bathing the swollen ankle before he came back—the keys clinking against a bottle.