The half-closed eyes of Stephen Gilman, leaning back weakly, waiting for his Scotch, regarded his daughter with a slight but reassuring smile. "Not exactly hurt, Fay, dear; just bumped is all," he succeeded in saying, when the Scotch arrived, and he gulped it gratefully.
All this time George Judson, fallen completely in the background, had been staring at the girl. She reminded him of a Persian kitten, soft, furry, loving, and she started some strange memory in him that was like a waking of the long, long past. He was staring at her—staring with all his eyes.
The reviving Scotch brought Mr. Gilman around considerably.
"Bolton, you and Morely help me upstairs," he directed, and, his arms upon the shoulders of his butler and his valet, had begun to mount with his daughter anxiously ahead, when, despite pain and anxiety, there occurred to him his duty to the author of his misfortune, the duty to be courteous and even magnanimous.
"Fay," he said and shifted slowly till his eye could contemplate that distressed person by the door, "this is a young friend of mine, Mr. Judson. He was good enough to bring me home—er—uh—after the accident. Thank him, won't you?"
The girl darted her first appraising glance at the young man her father's nod had indicated.
