“It is all right! Really, it is. We are going to be your friends.”

“What! Is she awake?” Elizabeth demanded sharply. Quickly she lifted the girl’s head and then, finding the angle difficult, shesquirmed her body round so that she, too, was able to look into the blue eyes. “Why, she is conscious!”

For a moment they regarded the staring eyes, in their hearts both horror and a great pity. Not once did the eyelids blink. The helpless girl uttered no sound, made no smallest movement save very slightly to move her eyes. Except for the poignant expression in them, her face might have been cast in plaster of Paris.

“Can’t you speak?” said Elizabeth, barely above a whisper.

Obtaining no response, she took up the cup of water and again pressed its edge against the immobile lips. There was no movement, no effort made to drink.

“Oh! You poor thing! Whatever is the matter?”

“Part her lips and see if she will drink when you drop the water into her mouth,” Nettlefold suggested.

Elizabeth accepted the suggestion, and they presently saw that the helpless girl swallowed. Her eyes were now misty, and from themwelled great tears which Elizabeth sponged away with the handkerchief.

“Won’t you try to talk?” she pleaded softly. “Can’t you talk? Can you close your eyelids? Try-just try to do that. No?” To her father, she said: “I can’t understand it. She seems perfectly conscious, and yet she is so helpless that she cannot even raise or lower her eyelids. I am positive that she can hear us and understand us.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” he agreed instantly. “Well, the only thing to do is to get her home as quickly as possible, Then we must call Dr Knowles. He should know whatis the matter with her. We’ll be moving. We can do nothing here.”