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Tish was quite sure her arm was broken, as well as all the ribs on one side. But she is a brave woman and made little fuss, although she kept poking a finger into her flesh here and there.

“Because,” she said, “the First Aid book says that if a lung is punctured the air gets into the tissues, and they crackle on pressure.”

It was soon after this that I saw Aggie, who had made no complaint about Tish falling on her, furtively testing her own tissues to see if they crackled.

Leaving my injured there by the creek, I went back to the tree and secured my paling again. By covering it with straw from the barn I was quite sure I could make a comfortable splint for Tish’s arm. However, I had but just reached the barn and was preparing to crawl through a window by standing on a rain barrel when I saw Tish limping after me.

“Well?” she said. “What idiotic idea is in your head, Lizzie? Because if it is more eggs—-“

“I am going to get some straw and make a splint.”

“Nonsense. What for?”

“What do you suppose I intend it for?” I demanded, tartly. “To trim a hat?”

“I won’t have a splint.”

“Very well,” I retorted. “Then I shall get some straw and start a fire to dry Aggie out.”

“You’ll stick in that window,” Tish said, in what, in a smaller woman, would have been a vicious tone.

“Look here, Tish,” I said, balancing on the edge of the rain barrel, “is there something in this barn you do not wish me to see?”

She looked at me steadily.

“Yes,” she said. “There is, Lizzie. And I’ll ask you to promise on your honor not to mention it.”

That promise I am glad to say I have kept until now, when the need of secrecy is past, Tish herself having divulged the truth. But at the time I was greatly agitated, and indeed almost fell into the rain barrel.

“Or try to find out what it is,” Tish went on, sternly.

I promised, of course, and Tish relaxed somewhat, although I caught her eye on me once or twice, as though she was daring me to so much as guess at the secret.

“Of course, Lizzie,” she said, as we approached Aggie, “it is nothing I am ashamed of.”

“Of course not,” I replied hastily. I took my courage in my hands and faced her. “Tish, have you an aeroplane hidden in that barn?”

“No,” she replied promptly. She might have enlarged on her denial, but Aggie took a violent sneezing spell just then, pressing herself between paroxysms to see if she crackled, and we decided to go home at once.

Here a new difficulty presented itself. Tish could not drive the car! I shall never forget my anguish when she turned to me and said:

“You will have to drive us home, Lizzie.”

“Never!” I cried.

“It’s perfectly easy,” she went on. “If children can run them, and the idiots they have in garages and on taxicabs—-“

“Never,” I said firmly. “It may be easy, but it took you six months, Tish Carberry, and three broken springs and any number of dead chickens and animals, besides the time you went through a bridge, and the night you drove off the end of a dock. It may be easy, but if it is, I’d rather do something hard.”

“I shall sit beside you, Lizzie,” she said, in a patient voice. “I daresay you know which is your right foot and which is your left. If not, I can tell you. I shall say ‘left’ when I want you to push out the clutch, and ‘right’ for the brake. As for gears, I can change them for you with my left hand.”

“I could do it sitting in a chair,” I said, in a despairing voice. “But Tish,” I said, in a last effort, “do you remember when you tried to teach me to ride a bicycle? And that the moment I saw something to avoid I made a mad dash for it?”