It was the law of his nature that he should give himself emphatically to the just and the unjust alike.
"He came home with me because I hurt my foot," Patty was saying.
Had she forgotten already, Stephen asked himself cynically, that it was not her foot but her ankle?
His suspicions returned while he looked at her blooming face, and he hoped earnestly that she would not feel impelled to relate any irrelevant details of the adventure.

Like Gideon Vetch on the platform she seemed incapable of withholding the smallest fragment of a fact; and the young man wondered if it were characteristic either of "the plain people," as he called them, or of circus riders as a class, that their minds should go habitually unclothed yet unashamed.
"Thank you, sir," said the Governor without effusion; and he asked: "Did you hurt yourself, Patty ?" while he bent over and laid his hand on her ankle.
A note of tenderness passed into his voice as he turned to the girl; and when she answered after a minute, Stephen recognized the same tone of affectionate playfulness that she used when she spoke of him.
"Not much," she replied carelessly.

Then she held out the drooping pigeon.

"I found this bird.

Is there anything we can do for it ?" The Governor took the bird from her, and examined it under the light with the manner of brisk confidence which directed his slightest action.
The man, for all his restless activity, appeared to be without excess or exaggeration when it was a matter of practical detail.