So I shouted out several times without receiving any answer.
What was to be done? Whatever it was required doing speedily, as the ankle needed properly bandaging.
Here was I with a sweetly pretty girl alone in the wood. The situation was rather embarrassing; but at that moment I would not have exchanged it for any other in the world.
"The only way I can think of," I said, "is for you to wait here, while I run to the nearest parish and try to get a conveyance of some sort or other to take you home. Where do you live?"
She raised her eyes piteously to my face.
"I am staying at Mrs. Mavis's in Sittinghorne. Oh! please don't go away, they will not know what has become of me. What am I to do?"
"Well, as you will not let me leave you. I shall have to take you with me; you do not look very heavy."
"Do you think you could carry me. It is quite a mile to our place."
I waited no longer, but bending down lifted her carefully in my arms, so as to hurt her as little as possible, and strode through the woods.
