Bob stood still a minute in deep perplexity, when he heard his
sister’s footstep on the stairs.
“ Oh, Edna ! ” he cried, drawing her into the library, “ I’m in
an awful scrape ; ” and he told her the whole story, knowing that
she would in some way console him.
“Robert!” she exclaimed, tears of reproach and sympathy
for their victim springing to her eyes.
“If he goes to the hospital there’ll be an investigation ; Oh,
what shall we do? ” he cried in a tone of anguish.
Edna’s sympathetic nature couldn’t bear to see Bob suffer.
“You must bring him here,” she answered.
“ But mother says I can’t.”
“I’ll go and see her myself,” and Edna ran to find her mother.
She says you may bring him,” she said, returning after a few
moments, “ and we’ll take turns staying out of school to take care
of him until he is well.”
“ Oh, you darling girl!” said Bob, clasping her in his arms
and kissing her affectionately.
An hour later an ambulance stopped before the Radcliff
house, and a very pale boy was carried up to Bob’s room. As
soon as he was neatly arranged in Bob’s bed, Edna came in.
Fortunately Mrs. Radcliff was hot in the room, for the instant
Edna saw the white, yet handsome face on the pillow she
burst into tears, thinking of the awful calamity which had been
so narrowly averted. The eyes were closed in a kind of stupor,
as they had been all the morning. But as if affected by a
magnetic impulse from her deep blue ones, they opened sud
denly and gazed at her.
She stopped crying in astonishment, and the tears on her soft
cheek only made her the prettier. The morning sun was stream
ing in upon her yellow hair, and as she stood for a moment
motionless the- patient wondered if he had not awakened in
fairyland.
In this, his first clearly conscious moment since the sublimely
terrible headlight of the engine had borne down upon him, he
found himself in a beautifully furnished, bright room, but "the
girl—no, surely it must be a dream, and he closed his eyes
again.
After a day or two of worry lest brain fever should ensue,
the patient passed the danger point and began rapidly to re
cover. It was Edna’s turn to attend him the first day after he
The Free Lance ,
[December,