“Yes; take ’em wherever you can find ’em,” said the superintendent, who was thinking pointedly of other things just then; and the permission given, he started his motor and drove away.

XXV

BLOOD AND IRON

Ten o’clock in the Saturday forenoon marked the time of Superintendent Kittredge’s flying visit to his chief’s headquarters-on-the-field at the head of Shonoho Canyon; and at that hour Evan Blount, blinking dizzily, and with his head bandaged and throbbing as if the premier company of all the African tom-tom symphonists were making free with it, was letting Mrs. Honoria beat up his pillows and prop him with them, so that the drum-beating clamor might be minimized to some bearable degree.

“You are feeling better now?” suggested the volunteer nurse, going to adjust the window-curtains for the better comfort of the blinking and aching eyes.

The victim of the hook-and-ladder squad’s mascot answered qualitatively.

“I feel as if I had been having an argument with a battering-ram and had come off second-best.  I’ve been out of my head, haven’t I?”

“A little, yes; but that was to be expected.  You were pretty badly hurt.”

“Have I been talking?”

“Not very much—­nothing intelligible.”  The little lady had drawn her chair to the window and was busying herself with the never-finished embroidery.

“What hit me—­was it the truck?”

“No; some of the people in the street said it was a dog; a coach-dog running and jumping at the heads of the fire-horses.  In falling you struck your head against the iron grating of a sewer inlet.”

“Umph!” said Blount, and the face-wrinkling which was meant to be a sardonic smile turned itself into a painful grin.  “Shot to death by a dog!  Blenkinsop or some of the others ought to have run that for a head-line.”  Then, with a twist of the hot eyeballs:  “This isn’t my room.  Where am I?”

“You are in the spare room of our suite.  Your father had you brought here so that we could take care of you properly.  But you mustn’t talk too much; it’s the doctor’s orders.”

Blount lay for a long time watching her as she passed the needle in and out through the bit of snowy linen stretched upon the tiny embroidery-ring.  She had fine eyes, he admitted; eyes with the little downward curve in brow and lid at the outer corners—­the curve of allurement, he had heard it called.  Also, her hands were shapely and pretty.  He recalled the saying that a woman may keep her age out of her face, but her hands will betray her.  Mrs. Honoria’s hands were still young; they looked almost as young as Patricia’s, he decided.  At the comparison he broke over the rule of silence.

“Does Patricia know?” he asked.

“Certainly.  She has been here nearly all morning.  She wouldn’t let anybody else hold your head while the doctor was sewing it up.”