This remark, if such it could be called, fell upon Amy's ears so suddenly that she half tumbled backward from her perch upon the manger, and just saved herself by springing lightly down, or she thought it was lightly, until she wheeled and faced the intruder. None other than Archibald Wingate, making a horrible grimace, and holding up one of his pudgy feet as if he were in great pain. "Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn't know it was your foot, or you were you--I thought it was only the hay on the floor." "Ugh! Great goodness! Umm. If you ever have the gout, young woman, you will understand how it feels to have anybody jump down full force upon your toes. Ouch! O dear! O dear!" Amy had never been accustomed to seeing people make ado over physical suffering. She did not understand this man before her, and a thrill of distress ran through her own frame, like the touch of an electric battery. "Oh, I am so sorry! I wouldn't have done it for anything if I had known. Can't I do something now to help you? Let me rub it or--or--lead you. You look--" In spite of her good intentions, the horrible contortions by which Mr. Wingate's countenance expressed his feelings affected her sense of the ridiculous, and she smiled. As instantly ashamed of the smile, she buried her face in her hands, and waited what would come next. "Huh! Yes, you look sorry, of course you do, laughing at an old man after you've nearly broken his foot in two. Hmm. You're a sorry lot, the whole of you; yes, you are! O-oh!" Yet he, too, and in spite of himself, laughed; but it was at his own pitiful joke about his kinsmen being a "sorry lot." Fortunately, Amy did not understand a jest of this nature, but she was swift to see the brightening of his face. She put her hand on his arm, and tried to draw his hand within her own. "Maybe it won't be so bad. Lean on me, and I'll help you to a seat or to the house. And thank you, thank you so much for putting Balaam in the stable, and taking such good care of him. If Hal had known, he wouldn't have worried so about the little beast. He's been so tenderly cared for, we couldn't bear to think of him as off in the open fields with nobody but Fayette." Mr. Wingate said not a word. He simply ceased groaning and grimacing, and he slipped his arm through Amy's, while a curious expression settled on his face. He did not lean at all heavily upon her, however, and he merely glanced toward the burro as the pair walked to the stable door. Then the animal thought it time to protest. Amy had brought him fresh grass, but she had dropped it all outside his manger, where he could not reach it. This was aggravation in the extreme. More than that, whenever, in the old days, she had been afflicted with one of these outbursts of affection, there had generally been a lump of sugar connected with it. To lose affection, hay, and sugar, all in one unhappy moment, was too much even for donkey patience. "AH-UMPH! H-umph! A-h-u-m-p-h!"