He scooped water up in his straw
hat and returned to Flora's Temple, carrying it carefully in both
hands. When he saw how quickly it ran through the straw he
pulled his handkerchief from his breast pocket with his teeth and
dropped it into the hat. It was with this that the girls wiped the
blood from the bailiff's brow.
"We ought to have smelling salts," said Kathleen, half in tears. "I
know we ought."
"They would be good," Mabel owned.
"Hasn't your aunt any?"
"Yes, but "
"Don't be a coward," said Gerald; "think of last night. They
wouldn't hurt you. He must have insulted them or something. Look
here, you run. We'll see that nothing runs after you."
There was no choice but to relinquish the head of the interesting
invalid to Kathleen; so Mabel did it, cast one glaring glance round
the rhododendron bordered slope, and fled towards the castle.
The other three bent over the still unconscious bailiff.
"He's not dead, is he?" asked Jimmy anxiously.
"No," Kathleen reassured him, "his heart's heating. Mabel and I felt
it in his wrist, where doctors do. How frightfully good-looking he
is!"
"Not so dusty," Gerald admitted.
"I never know what you mean by good-looking," said Jimmy, and
suddenly a shadow fell on the marble beside them and a fourth
voice spoke not Mabel s; her hurrying figure, though still in sight,
was far away.
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