I had had many and grievous lessons before I had found it out; but now I had, life seemed a new thing to me!
As my convalescence advanced and my bodily strength returned, my spirits rose within me, and I felt eager to be back at my post at Hawk Street. However, I had to exercise some patience yet. Meanwhile, with Billy (and occasionally Mr Smith), as my companion by day, and Jack by night, the time could hardly hang heavily.
"Well, Billy," I said one morning when the doctor had been and told me that next week I might be allowed to sit up for an hour or so a day, "I shall soon be rid of this bed. I don't know what would have become of me if it hadn't been for you and Jack Smith."
"Ga on," said Billy, who, with his tongue in one cheek and his face twisting into all sorts of contortions, was sitting writing an exercise in a copy-book, "you don't know what you're torkin' about."
"Oh yes, I do, though," I replied, understanding that this was Billy's modest way of disclaiming any merit.
"More'n you didn't when you was 'avin' the fever!" observed the boy.
"What?" I inquired. "Was I talking much when I was ill?"
"You was so," said Billy, "a-joring and a-joring and a-joring same as you never heard a bloke."
"What was I saying?" I asked, feeling a little uneasy as to what I might have said in my delirium.
"You was a swearin' tremenjus," said the boy.
"Was I?" Alas! Jack would have heard it all.
"Yes, and you was a-torkin' about your Crowses, and Wollopses, and Doubledaisies, and sich like. And you was a-tellin' that there 'Orksbury (which I'd like to do for, the animal, so I would), as you was a convex son, and he wasn't to tell no one for fear Mashing should 'ear of it. And you was a-crying out for your friend Smith to shine your boots, and tellin' him you wouldn't do it never no more. And you was a- singin' out that there was a little gal a-bein' run away with on a pony, and you must go and stop 'im. You was a-jawin', rather."
I could hardly help laughing at his description, though its details reminded me sadly of my old follies and their consequences.
The most extraordinary raving of all, however, was that which referred to my stopping the little girl's runaway pony at Packworth years ago--an incident I don't believe I had ever once thought of since.