a puzzled tone, as she took in the details of his rather grotesque appearance.
Harrington, unconscious now of the figure he cut, was slow in answering. He was seeing her more clearly with every step, dwelling on each new perception. Her frock was a pink foam that clung as if it loved the curves which molded it and, but for that hat, she might have been some garden nymph whose costume was a flower. Contrasts with another type of beauty were inevitable; but—here was his kind. He witnessed this to himself by quickening his stride.
"Just that I got a bang on the bean and a tumble in the water," he explained as they met. "A Siwash—man from my old platoon—pulled me out and a—another—another Siwash did me up."
"And of course those Indians learned their first-aid lessons like the others," Billie inferred, observing his bandages with professional approval.
"Hum—yes," mumbled Henry, guiltily aware that he had been vague by some kind of instinct rather than remembering to be designedly so.
But all other sensations were momentarily blotted out by Billie's young arm essaying to support him along the highway when he needed no support at all. And her whole manner was delicious. She wasn't upstage for a minute. She had come out here on this telephone call to taxi him into town just like a regular good fellow. He noted all this with deep inward trickles of delight; also that the girl's face was flushed with pleasurable excitement.
"And now?" she asked as the car was straightened out on the homeward road, "just what did happen? Something about the vault robbers, wasn't it?"
