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PLUCK
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steady, "but I'm afraid I can't quite make it, after all."

"Well," he replied generously, "I've had enough, too. We'll go back together."

"I'm awfully sorry," she went on. (Oh, why did it have to be the man who had winked at her!) "I'm ashamed, too—but I—my ankle, you see—is sort of turned, or something, I think." A sprained ankle, she well knew, was as detestable as fainting spells, in this age. She would be despised now forever. "I'm so stupid! I was enjoying it till then," bravely she assured him. "But on that log, back there, my foot got caught some way—and—" Bord Mathewson was kneeling now.

"Let's see it," he said, fumbling with the straps. "Hurt?" he called up to her.

"Not much," she replied brightly. "Not very—" She stopped abruptly and, to Bord Mathewson's amazement, toppled over in the snow.

When Edna drifted back into consciousness, she was lying down on a couch somewhere. There was no wind, no snow, no pounding in her head. Her breath came easily, rhythmically, like music. It felt as if it had been oiled. She dared not stir for fear this blessed, half-awake state might vanish. She knew the wisdom of lying still under such circumstances. It was when one