"Yes, I do. It was lucky for you that he was there when you were shot."

"Yes, that was a piece of luck, wasn't it? He had a busy night of it.

I say, who has been asking for me?"

"Oh, everybody, of course. You will have plenty of visitors when you are well enough to receive them."

"I'm well enough now. You're trying to keep me to yourself, Sarah.

There's a sort of fatal fascination about me that no good-looking woman can resist? I say, do the doctors make love to you in the hospital?"

"I think you are getting light-headed. You have talked quite enough for the present. Would you like some jelly?"

"I should like some strawberries and cream and a pint of champagne.

Look here, tell me about the doctors. Are there any good-looking fellows amongst them?"

The conversation was interrupted at this point by the arrival of Walter Clinton, whose knickerbockered homespuns only served to heighten the effect of his cool professional manner.

"Well, nurse, how's your patient?"

"Going on well, doctor; but you must please tell him that he must keep quiet for the present. He wants to see everybody in the house."

Walter took his seat by the bed and felt his patient's pulse. "You can see people to-morrow," he said, as he pocketed his watch. "You're doing all right. Better have one more day to yourself, though. You've had a narrow squeak."

"I know. Mrs. Gamp says that if it hadn't been for you, I should have snuffed out. She revels in gore. I don't think she's the woman for her job."

"Don't you believe what he says, doctor. He's full of his nonsense."

"How's Humphrey?" asked Bobby.

"Oh, he's all right. He got off with a scalp wound. Poor old d.i.c.k had his shin laid bare. I've got him on my hands. But we're well out of it. That was a brute of a fellow. And there were two others; tough customers, all of them. If we hadn't come along they might have got the better of our fellows. They've quodded them. The Governor went over to Petty Sessions to-day. By the by, he'd like to see you when you're ready."

"I'm ready now. Ask him to step up."

"To-morrow--if you get a good night."

"What are they all doing downstairs?"

"Slacking, and playing with my kiddies. They all sent messages to you."

"They must have got a pretty good shock. You turned them out of the bus, didn't you? I don't remember much of what happened."

"Yes, but I'd sent one of the grooms on to get some more carriages.

They didn't have to wait long. They're all right. Joan got a bit of a chill, and is seedy."

"I suppose she was--upset about it all? Pretty funking to see a fellow brought along in the state I was in!"

"Oh, they all took it very well. Susan was the worst, but of course Humphrey looked worse than he really was--luckily."

Bobby Trench, an incurable optimist, allowed himself the solace of imagining that Joan's indisposition had been brought on by her agitation on his account, which it well might have been without undue partiality on her part. For after waiting for minutes that had seemed like hours, while the fight was going on in the wood, and being forsaken by Walter, who had left them in answer to d.i.c.k's shouts for help, they had been turned out of the omnibus, so that the bleeding, senseless figure of Bobby Trench might be laid there for Walter to examine and bind up. Humphrey had also needed attention, and Susan had been frightened almost into hysterics by his appearance. They had walked for half a mile in satin shoes, mostly over gra.s.s wringing wet, until the carriages from Kencote had picked them up; and after the fatigue of the ball and in her state of low spirits, it was small wonder that Joan should have succ.u.mbed to her experiences.

But her indisposition had caused some lessening of the tension between herself and Nancy, who, possibly supported by the tender attentions of John Spence, had escaped all ill effect from the excitements of the night. Their differences were ignored. There had been no real reconciliation, but the events in which they had partic.i.p.ated had formed a skin over the wounds that each had dealt the other, and they could behave with some approach to former freedom.

Bobby Trench's first unofficial visitor was the Squire, as was only fitting. Mrs. Clinton had been with him constantly until the arrival of the nurse, but he had then been delirious, and had not known her, and she had not entered his room since.

The Squire came in, bringing with him a breath of the now frosty outer air, but treading Agag-like on complimentary slippers.

"Well, sir," was his hearty greeting, tuned to suitable lowness of pitch, "this is a pretty business to have brought you into! Lucky it wasn't worse, eh? I told them on the Bench to-day that you were the first in the field. There were many enquiries after you; and we've got those blackguards safely by the leg. You've got everything you want, I hope. Nurse looking after you well?"

"You wouldn't think it to look at her, but she's a bully, Mr. Clinton.

If you get ill you send for somebody else."

The Squire, after a glance at the nurse's demurely smiling face, checked a laugh at the witticism. "Keep up your spirits," he said.

"That's capital. You'll soon be out of the wood if you take it cheerfully. We shall make a lot of you when you come downstairs. You did well; and I've written to tell your father so."

Bobby Trench felt that a few torn muscles and splintered bones were a small price to pay for this approving geniality. On his arrival, the Squire seemed to have swung back from the acquiescent mood in which he had caused his former aversion to be invited to Kencote, and had greeted him with a manner not much more conciliatory than he had previously shown him. Bobby Trench, on reflection, had attributed his invitation to Humphrey's having imparted as much of his confidence as would secure it; and, in view of his acknowledged eligibility, had expected a rather warmer welcome than he had received, either from his host or hostess. It had seemed to him that he would have other obstacles to surmount, in order to win Joan, than those which she might be inclined to put between herself and him of her own accord. It was therefore gratifying to find the face of his host thus turned towards him, and would have been worth a substantial reduction in the sentence to be presently pa.s.sed upon his a.s.sailant, if he had had the computing of his punishment.

"I must write a line to my father," he said. "I'm glad you've written to him. He doesn't suggest coming here, I suppose?"

"Well, yes, he does. We shall be pleased to see him--and her ladyship too, if she cares about it."

"Oh, save us from her ladyship!" said Bobby, unfilially. "She'd be hopeless in a sick-room; and this is a real keep-your-distance, Sundays-only sick-room, ain't it, Sarah Gamp?"

"Mr. Trench must be kept as quiet as possible," said the nurse; and the Squire, with an unintentionally obvious lift of spirits, said that he did not gather that Lady Sedbergh was anything but content to leave her son in present hands. "I've said we are looking after you as well as we can," he said. "You'll have plenty of company when you're well enough to receive it. Humphrey wants to have a look at you later on.

If you hadn't been so sharp at the start, I expect he would have come in for what you got. He'd have been pretty well knocked out as it was, if it hadn't been for that young fellow, Gotch, and d.i.c.k. It's the first time anything of this sort has happened at Kencote since my grandfather's time. I don't say we haven't had to teach our local sportsmen a lesson or two occasionally, but these were regular professional ruffians from a distance--Ganton they come from--and that cla.s.s of gentry sticks at nothing when he's interfered with. You see we've done very well with our young birds this year, and they must have got wind of the fact that we'd kept those coverts. That's why they turned their kind attentions on to us. They've been all round about, but mostly on more fully stocked places than mine generally is, and they've never been nabbed. Fortunately my keeper had an idea that they might pay us a visit, and had all his watchers out there. Otherwise you might have come upon them driving home, and then I don't know what would have happened. It's providential all round--the keepers being there, and you coming just in the nick of time to reinforce them.

We're rid of a dangerous pest; and no particular harm is done--except to you, I'm afraid. I don't want to make light of that."

But if the Squire did not, Bobby Trench was not unwilling to do so, now that the worst was over. He saw himself an interesting, not to say petted, figure, with a perhaps undeserved but none the less convenient aura of heroism, and hoped accordingly.

"You must have got a bit of a shock when you first heard of it," he said. "I suppose that was when the ladies came in."

"I was waiting for them," said the Squire on a note of detailed reminiscence. "They had knocked me up and told me that the groom had come in for carriages, and I had had him in and learnt what he could tell me. I should have gone myself, but thought it better to stay and direct any preparations that had to be made. I didn't know but what there might have been serious accidents, and it turned out I was right.

My wife had the idea too; but women are apt to lose their heads in these emergencies, so I stayed to see that everything was got ready. I went down into the cellar myself for a bottle of my oldest brandy. You want to keep a cool head on these occasions."

"The ladies were pretty much upset, eh?"

"Oh, I soon stopped their fuss. 'Look here, _you're_ not hurt,' I said. 'You'd better all swallow something hot, and then tuck yourselves up in your blankets.' I packed them all off, except Virginia and Miss Dexter--oh, and Susan, who wouldn't go till she'd seen Humphrey safe; and Nancy was helping her mother; she's turning into a useful girl, that--didn't turn a hair."

"Then Miss Joan was the only one who went up?"

"Yes, she was upset--hasn't quite the head that Nancy has. She's in bed now, but there's nothing really the matter with her. We're over it all very well, and ought to be thankful for it. Depend upon it, there's a Providence that looks after these things; and I say we're not doing our duty unless we recognise it, and show that we have some sense of grat.i.tude. Sure you've got everything you want here?"

He looked round the large comfortable room with an air of complacent proprietorship. He kept habitually to half-a-dozen rooms of the big house, and had no such feeling for it and its h.o.a.rded contents as would impel some men and most women to occasional tours of inspection and appraisal. But it was all his, and it was all as it should be. He had not put foot inside this room perhaps for years, and took it in with a pleased feeling of proprietorship and recognition.

"Oh, every mortal thing, thanks," said Bobby. "It's a jolly room, this; cheery and peaceful at the same time. Just the room to be laid up in, if you've got to be laid up."

"My grandfather died in this room," said the Squire, by way of adding to its impression of cheerfulness. "Had it before his father died and never would shift downstairs. It was done up later, but I see there are one or two of his pictures still on the walls. This was his wardrobe, too. A good piece of mahogany; they don't make furniture so solid now-a-days."

He had got up to examine one or two of the old sporting prints on the walls, which he did with informative comment. "Most of the furniture is the same," he said, now looking round him from the vantage point of the hearthrug, where he seemed more s.p.a.ciously at his ease than sitting in a chair by the bedside. "Yes, they only papered it, and put a new carpet and curtains. He wouldn't have curtains at all; liked to see the sun rise, and wasn't much behind it himself as a rule. He was a fine old fellow. Have you read his diaries?"

"Yes, I have," said Bobby, stretching the truth not unduly, for the two volumes of Colonel Clinton of Kencote's record of his lifelong pursuit of fur and feathers were in every adequately furnished country house library, and had been at least dipped into by countless sportsmen.