Labrador (N.L.) -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Love stories, English
It was all too spectacular for word or speech until the thing lay still.
Even then the croquet players stood passive for awhile waiting for
something to happen. It took some seconds to reconcile their minds to
this sudden loss of initiative in a monster that had been so recently
and threateningly full of go. It seemed quite a long time before it came
into Marjorie's head that she ought perhaps to act in some way. She saw
a tall young man wriggling on all fours from underneath the wreckage of
fabric. He stared at her rather blankly. She went forward with a vague
idea of helping him. He stood up, swayed doubtfully on his legs, turned,
and became energetic, struggling mysteriously with the edge of the left
wing. He gasped and turned fierce blue eyes over his shoulder.
"Help me to hold the confounded thing up!" he cried, with a touch of
irritation in his voice at her attitude.
Marjorie at once seized the edge of the plane and pushed. The second
man, in a peculiar button-shaped head-dress, was lying crumpled up
underneath, his ear and cheek were bright with blood, and there was a
streak of blood on the ground near his head.
"That's right. Can you hold it if I use only one hand?"
Marjorie gasped "Yes," with a terrific weight as it seemed suddenly on
her wrists.
"Right O," and the tall young man had thrust himself backwards under the
plane until it rested on his back, and collared the prostrate man. "Keep
it up!" he said fiercely when Marjorie threatened to give way. He seemed
to assume that she was there to obey orders, and with much grunting and
effort he had dragged his companion clear of the wreckage.
The man's face was a mass of blood, and he was sickeningly inert to his
companion's lugging.
"Let it go," said the tall young man, and Marjorie thanked heaven as the
broken wing flapped down again.
She came helpfully to his side, and became aware of Daffy and her mother
a few paces off. Magnet--it astonished her--was retreating hastily. But
he had to go away because the sight of blood upset him--so much that it
was always wiser for him to go away.
"Is he hurt?" cried Mrs. Pope.
"We both are," said the tall young man, and then as though these other
people didn't matter and he and Marjorie were old friends, he said: "Can
we turn him over?"
"I think so." Marjorie grasped the damaged man's shoulder and got him
over skilfully.
"Will you get some water?" said the tall young man to Daffy and Mrs.
Pope, in a way that sent Daffy off at once for a pail.
"He wants water," she said to the parlourmaid who was hurrying out of
the house.
The tall young man had gone down on his knees by his companion,
releasing his neck, and making a hasty first examination of his
condition. "The pneumatic cap must have saved his head," he said,
throwing the thing aside. "Lucky he had it. He can't be badly hurt. Just
rubbed his face along the ground. Silly thing to have come as we did."
He felt the heart, and tried the flexibility of an arm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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