“Now you’re talking sense!” said the Angel.

“May I try to help your arm?” he asked.

“Have you any idea how it hurts?” she parried.

“A little,” said Freckles.

“Well, Mr. McLean said We’d probably find his son here”

“His son!” cried Freckles.

“That’s what he said.  And that you would do anything you could for us; and that we could trust you with our lives.  But I would have trusted you anyway, if I hadn’t known a thing about you.  Say, your father is rampaging proud of you, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” answered the dazed Freckles.

“Well, call on me if you want reliable information.  He’s so proud of you he is all swelled up like the toad in AEsop’s Fables.  If you have ever had an arm hurt like this, and can do anything, why, for pity sake, do it!”

She turned back her sleeve, holding toward Freckles an arm of palest cameo, shaped so exquisitely that no sculptor could have chiseled it.

Freckles unlocked his case, and taking out some cotton cloth, he tore it in strips.  Then he brought a bucket of the cleanest water he could find.  She yielded herself to his touch as a baby, and he bathed away the blood and bandaged the ugly, ragged wound.  He finished his surgery by lapping the torn sleeve over the cloth and binding it down with a piece of twine, with the Angel’s help about the knots.

Freckles worked with trembling fingers and a face tense with earnestness.

“Is it feeling any better?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s well now!” cried the Angel.  “It doesn’t hurt at all, any more.”

“I’m mighty glad,” said Freckles.  “But you had best go and be having your doctor fix it right; the minute you get home.”

“Oh, bother!  A little scratch like that!” jeered the Angel.  “My blood is perfectly pure.  It will heal in three days.”

“It’s cut cruel deep.  It might be making a scar,” faltered Freckles, his eyes on the ground. “’Twould—­’twould be an awful pity.  A doctor might know something to prevent it.”

“Why, I never thought of that!” exclaimed the Angel.

“I noticed you didn’t,” said Freckles softly.  “I don’t know much about it, but it seems as if most girls would.”

The Angel thought intently, while Freckles still knelt beside her.  Suddenly she gave herself an impatient little shake, lifted her glorious eyes full to his, and the smile that swept her sweet, young face was the loveliest thing that Freckles ever had seen.

“Don’t let’s bother about it,” she proposed, with the faintest hint of a confiding gesture toward him.  “It won’t make a scar.  Why, it couldn’t, when you have dressed it so nicely.”

The velvety touch of her warm arm was tingling in Freckles’ fingertips.  Dainty lace and fine white ribbon peeped through her torn dress.  There were beautiful rings on her fingers.  Every article she wore was of the finest material and in excellent taste.  There was the trembling Limberlost guard in his coarse clothing, with his cotton rags and his old pail of swamp water.  Freckles was sufficiently accustomed to contrasts to notice them, and sufficiently fine to be hurt by them always.