With much effort Gavin managed to stroke the wrigglingly active head, and to say a reassuring word to his worshiper.  Then, glancing again at Claire, he explained: 

“I’d done about a mile toward Miami when he overtook me.  There was no use in trying to send him home.  So I brought him.  Just as we got to the gate, here—­”

“I know,” intervened Claire, eager to spare him the effort of speech.  “I saw.  It was splendid of you, Mr. Brice!  My brother and I are in your debt for more than we can ever hope to pay.”

“Nonsense!” he protested.  “I made a botch of the whole thing.  I ought—­”

“No,” denied Milo.  “It was I who made a botch of it.  I owe you not only my life but an apology.  It was my blow, not the other man’s, that knocked you out.  I misunderstood, and—­”

“That’s all right!” declared Gavin.  “In the dim light it’s a miracle we didn’t all of us slug the wrong men.  I—­”

He stopped.  Claire had been working over something on a table behind him.  Now she came forward with a cold compress for his abraded scalp.  Skillfully, she applied it, her dainty fingers wondrously deft.

“Red Cross?” asked Brice, as she worked.

“Just a six-month nursing course, during the war,” she said, modestly, adding:  “I didn’t get across.”

“I’m sorry,” said Gavin.  “I mean, for the poor chaps who might have profited by such clever bandaging ....  Yes, that’s a very dull and heavy compliment.  I know it.  But—­there’s a lot of gratitude behind it.  You’ve made this throbbing old head of mine feel ever so much better, Miss Standish.”

Milo was looking bewilderedly from one to the other, as if trying to understand how this ill-clad man chanced to be on such terms of acquaintanceship with his fastidious little sister.  Claire read his look of inquiry, and said: 

“Mr. Brice found Bobby Burns, this afternoon, and brought him home to me.  It was nice of him, wasn’t it?  For it took him ever so far out of his way.”

Gavin noted that she made no mention of his having come to the Standish home by way of the hidden path.  It seemed to him that she gave him a glance of covert appeal, as though beseeching him not to mention it.  He nodded, ever so slightly, and took up the narrative, as she paused for words.

“I saw Miss Standish and yourself, at Miami, this morning,” said he, “and the collie, here, on the back seat of your car.  Then, this afternoon, as I was walking out in this direction, I saw the dog again.  I recognized him, and I guessed he had strayed.  So he and I made friends.  And as we were strolling along together, we met Miss Standish.  At least, I met her.  Bobby met a prematurely gray Persian cat, with the dreamy Bagdad name of ‘Simon Cameron.’  By the time the dog and cat could be sorted out from each other—­”

“Oh, I see!” laughed Milo.  “And I don’t envy you the job of sorting them.  It was mighty kind of you to—­”