I stopped and put one foot to the ground.

What a hard-hearted wretch I thought myself to be! Here I was thinking of all sorts of nonsense and speeding away without a thought of the young girl who had hurt herself the day before and who had been helped by me to her home! She lived but a few miles back, and I had determined, the evening before, to run down and see how she was getting on before starting on my day's journey.
I turned and went bowling back over the road on which I had been so terribly drenched the previous afternoon.

In a very little while my bicycle was leaning against the fence of the pretty house by the road-side, and I had entered the front yard.

The slender girl was sitting on the piazza behind some vines.

When she saw me she quickly closed the book she was reading, drew one foot from a little stool, and rose to meet me.