nd stopped.

"Now," said Mother, "are you hurt?"

"If he was really hurt, he wouldn't make such a fuss," said Bobbie,
still trembling with fury; "he's not a coward!"

"I think my foot's broken off, that's all," said Peter, huffily, and sat
up. Then he turned quite white. Mother put her arm round him.

"He IS hurt," she said; "he's fainted. Here, Bobbie, sit down and take
his head on your lap."

Then Mother undid Peter's boots. As she took the right one off,
something dripped from his foot on to the ground. It was red blood. And
when the stocking came off there were three red wounds in Peter's foot
and ankle, where the teeth of the rake had bitten him, and his foot was
covered with red smears.

"Run for water--a basinful," said Mother, and Phyllis ran. She upset
most of the water out of the basin in her haste, and had to fetch more
in a jug.

Peter did not open his eyes again till Mother had tied her handkerchief
round his foot, and she and Bobbie had carried him in and laid him on
the brown wooden settle in the dining-room. By this time Phyllis was
halfway to the Doctor's.

Mother sat by Peter and bathed his foot and talked to him, and Bobbie
went out and got tea ready, and put on the kettle.

"It's all I can do," she told herself. "Oh, suppose Peter should die, or
be a helpless cripple for life, or have to walk with crutches, or wear a
boot with a sole like a log of wood!"

She stood by the back door reflecting on these gloomy possibilities, her
eyes fixed on the water-butt.

"I wish I'd never been born," she said, and she said it out loud.

"Why, lawk a mercy, what's that for?" asked a voice, and Perks stood
before her with a wooden trug basket full of green-leaved things and
soft, loose earth.

"Oh, it's you," she said. "Peter's hurt his foot with a rake--three
great gaping wounds, like soldiers get. And it was partly my fault."

"That it wasn't, I'll go bail," said Perks. "Doctor seen him?"

"Phyllis has gone for the Doctor."

"He'll be all right; you see if he isn't," said Perks. "Why, my father's
second cousin had a hay-fork run into him, right into his inside, and he
was right as ever in a few weeks, all except his being a bit weak in
the head afterwards, and they did say that it was along of his getting
a touch of the sun in the hay-field, and not the fork at all. I remember
him well. A kind-'earted chap, but soft, as you might say."

Bobbie tried to let herself be cheered by this heartening