"The calf got mixed up in the rose-bush, and while I was getting him out he kicked me," explained Bob, glibly, shamelessly loading upon the back of a tiny and unoffending little bull-calf nibbling in front of the door the burden of his scratched and bruise-stained countenance. Sydney averted her eyes as he told this unblushing lie, and sighed again as she thought of the poor mother, for she knew how long a Carolinian can stay on a horse, and that Bob must have been bad, indeed, to have rolled off, as it was evident that he had done. "You must let me do it up for you," she said. "Go and get me the witch-hazel and something for a bandage." She sat and waited for him in the living-room, where modern taste had made use of the blue-and-white homespun coverlets of the Doctor's grandmother as door curtains and couch covers. She noticed the kettle swung over the fire from the same crane that had balanced its burden thus for a hundred years, and she listened to Bob knocking about up-stairs in the room over her head. "Now, sit down," she cried, when he returned. "You're so dreadfully tall. Towels! That won't do at all! Here, I'll wet my handkerchief and put that on first." "May I keep it?" Bob's good eye twinkled merrily, and what was visible of the other showed some amusement. "Of course not. You'll return it to me as soon as you can." Sydney's mouth twitched in appreciation of his audacity. "I'm afraid I can't very soon," he replied, gravely. "I expect to need it for a long, long time." He turned to the mirror and gazed therein at his shock of black hair rising above the linen, and at the one rueful eye visible below. "It makes me look rather a fool, doesn't it? But it's awfully sweet of you to do it, Sydney. I say, Sydney." Suddenly he wheeled about and seized both her hands. "Is it always going to be this way? Are you never going to care for me? You know I'd give my life for you. You never asked me to do anything yet that I didn't do," he hurried on, yearning for an answer from her, yet knowing well that when she raised those white lids the eyes would not give him the reply that he wanted. "Truly, I'll do anything you say, if only you'll care a little, just a little, dear!" He drew her to him, and she raised to his her eyes, warm, brown, swimming in tears. He let fall her hands, realizing that she _knew_--that she always had known--and feeling how empty were his words when he had never tried to do for her sake the one thing that might touch her. Letting fall her hands, he sank speechless upon his knees, and buried his head in the blue-and-white coverlet of the couch. With tear-laden eyes Sydney walked to the gate, her hands outstretched before her, like a blind man feeling his way. Johnny rubbed his nose in sympathy against her shoulder as she unfastened his chain. It was the first time in Bob's fond, foolish, generous life that ever he had allowed Sydney to do for herself anything that he could do for her.