"I'm all right," said Edmund, with a kindly smile to the horribly
distressed Molly. She went up to him with a gentle, tender anxiety on
her face that betrayed a too strong feeling, only he was just faint
enough not to notice it.

"It's nothing, child," he said in the fatherly tone that to Molly meant
so far too much. "The merest rick. I forgot, in the hurry, to think how
high I was lifting you, and I also forgot that there might be cucumber
frames on the other side!"

"I wouldn't have said 'over the garden wall,' sir, if there had been,"
said the gardener with a smile, as he offered a glass of water that had
been fetched by the other man, whose coat and gaiters proclaimed him
unmistakably a keeper.

"A fine dog, poor fellow," said Edmund to the latter.

The keeper shook his head. "I don't deny it, sir, but there are fine
lions and fine bears, too, sir, that are kept locked up in the
Zoölogical Gardens." Evidently the gardener and the keeper were of one
opinion in this matter.

Presently Sir Edmund was so clearly all right that the men, after being
tipped and having all their further offers of help refused, went away.

Edmund and Molly were left alone.

"How well you run!" he said, smiling.

"Yes; even without a ferocious dog behind me I can run fairly well," she