to pitch over?"

"I did not come to pitch over," said Mell, bewildered, "did I?"

"Of course you did! I had been looking for you for ever so long, and
standing on top there, I happened to look down, and saw you lying
here. And you never will know how scared I was, for, at first, I
thought you were dead. Gad, didn't I make tracks, though, after I got
started! But, drink a little more of this, and now, don't you feel set
up again?"

"Considerably so," said Mell, trying, too, to look set up. He was so
kind, and she, poor, bruised thing, so grateful. This little word,
kind, so often upon the lip--upon yours and mine, and the lips of our
friends, as we encounter them socially on our pilgrimage day by day,
is only at certain epochs in our own lives fully understood, and
deservedly cherished deep down in the heart. And yet, so few of us can
be great, and so many of us could be kind if we would, and oftener
than we are.

"I know just why you toppled," proceeded Mell's kind rescuer.

"But I didn't topple!" again protested Mell.

"Did you fall down on purpose?"

"No. I did not fall at all, as far as I know."

"Exactly! those are the worst kind--the falls you can't tell anything
about."

So they are. Her's had not been far in space--she remembered it all
now, with an acute pang--but, oh, so far in spirit!

"You could walk now a little, couldn't you?"

"I think I could," said Mell.

She got upon her feet with his assistance.

"You are shaky, yet."

"A little shaky," Mell admitted.

"Then take my arm."

She took it, as a wise being takes the inevitable all through life,
submissively, and without saying much about it.

They walked slowly, and the young follower of dear old Ike watched his
companion's every step, with a solicitude bordering on the fatherly.

"What do you suppose I am going to do with you, now?"

She could not imagine.

"Give you something to eat--not that only, make you eat it! I gave you
enough at dinner time, if you had only eaten it, but you left all my
goody-goodies untasted."

"And you unthanked," added Mell, with a ghost of her old smile, and a
_soupcon_ of her old sprightliness.

"No matter about that! Only, I was worried that you could not eat, and
I know the reason why."

Did he? Did he know it? The girl at his side dreaded to hear his next
words.

"Miss Josey had been working you to death all the morning. I saw you
how you stayed around and looked after everything, while Miss