“You'll be killed if you do! When she stays this long, it means that she has a focus on something. You see, when she has a focus, and lies in the weeds and water for hours, and the sun bakes her, and things crawl over her, and then someone comes along and scares her bird away just as she has it coaxed up—why, she kills them. If I melt, you won't go after her. She's probably blistered and half eaten up; but she never will quit until she is satisfied.”
“Then it will be safer to be taking care of you,” suggested Freckles.
“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.
He lifted his eyes with a shadowy pain in them to hers, and found them of serene, unconscious purity. What she had said was straight from a kind, untainted, young heart. She meant every word of it. Freckles' soul sickened. He scarcely knew whether he could muster strength to stand.
“We must go and hunt for the carriage,” said the Angel, rising.
In instant alarm for her, Freckles sprang up, grasped the cudgel, and led the way, sharply watching every step. He went as close the log as he felt that he dared, and with a little searching found the carriage. He cleared a path for the Angel, and with a sigh of relief saw her enter it safely. The heat was intense. She pushed the damp hair from her temples.
“This is a shame!” said Freckles. “You'll never be coming here again.”
“Oh yes I shall!” said the Angel. “The Bird Woman says that these birds remain over a month in the nest and she would like to make a picture every few days for seven or eight weeks, perhaps.”
Freckles barely escaped crying aloud for joy.
“Then don't you ever be torturing yourself and your horse to be coming in here again,” he said. “I'll show you a way to drive almost to the nest on the east trail, and then you can come around to my room and stay while the Bird Woman works. It's nearly always cool there, and there's comfortable seats, and water.”
“Oh! did you have drinking-water there?” she cried. “I was never so thirsty or so hungry in my life, but I thought I wouldn't mention it.”
“And I had not the wit to be seeing!” wailed Freckles. “I can be getting you a good drink in no time.”
He turned to the trail.
“Please wait a minute,” called the Angel. “What's your name? I want to think about you while you are gone.” Freckles lifted his face with the brown rift across it and smiled quizzically.
“Freckles?” she guessed, with a peal of laughter. “And mine is——”
“I'm knowing yours,” interrupted Freckles.
“I don't believe you do. What is it?” asked the girl.
“You won't be getting angry?”
“Not until I've had the water, at least.”
It was Freckles' turn to laugh. He whipped off his big, floppy straw hat, stood uncovered before her, and said, in the sweetest of all the sweet tones of his voice: “There's nothing you could be but the Swamp Angel.”
The girl laughed happily.
Once out of her sight, Freckles ran every step of the way to the cabin. Mrs. Duncan gave him a small bucket of water, cool from the well. He carried it in the crook of his right arm, and a basket filled with bread and butter, cold meat, apple pie, and pickles, in his left hand.
“Pickles are kind o' cooling,” said Mrs. Duncan.
Then Freckles ran again.
The Angel was on her knees, reaching for the bucket, as he came up.
“Be drinking slow,” he cautioned her.
“Oh!” she cried, with a long breath of satisfaction. “It's so good! You are more than kind to bring it!”
Freckles stood blinking in the dazzling glory of her smile until he scarcely could see to lift the basket.
“Mercy!” she exclaimed. “I think I had better be naming you the 'Angel.' My Guardian Angel.”
“Yis,” said Freckles. “I look the character every day—but today most emphatic!”
“Angels don't go by looks,” laughed the girl. “Your father told us you had been scrapping. But he told us why. I'd gladly wear all your cuts and bruises if I could do anything that would make my father look as peacocky as yours did. He strutted