she could not know how well the skull was cushioned inside with brains to resist a blow.
She shuddered, as she swooped about toward this possible corpse. It might be that he was killed, and half the fault hers. No wonder her fine color, shining in the right parts of an admirably drawn face, all disappeared instantly.
But she evidently was not frightened. She halted, kneeled, looked curiously at the stranger, and then proceeded, in a perfectly cool and self-possessed way, to pick him up.
A solid fellow, heavy to lift in his present lumpish condition of dead-weight! She had to tug mightily to get him up into a sitting position. When he was raised, all the backbone seemed gone from his spine, and it took the whole force of her vigorous arms to sustain him.
The effort was enough to account for the return of her color. It came rushing back splendidly. Cheeks, forehead, everything but nose, blushed. The hard work of lifting so much avoirdupois, and possibly, also, the novelty of supporting so much handsome fellow, intensified all her hues. Her eyes — blue, or that shade even more faithful than blue — deepened; and her pale golden hair grew several carats — not carrots — brighter.
She was repaid for her active sympathy at once by discovering that this big, awkward thing was not a dead, but only a stunned body. It had an ugly bump and a bleeding cut on its manly skull, but otherwise was quite an agreeable object to
