She welcomed the arrival with the anxious inquiry, 'O Mr. Rugg! I am so glad! Should the cotton touch where the skin is broken?--Here--inside his elbow and hand.'
'Broken! You have been tearing off the clothes, instead of cutting them! I thought you knew better, Miss Underwood.'
'It was my own doing,' murmured Felix, so faintly, that Mr. Rugg, with his usual roughness, scolded at his not having had some brandy at once, and then at there being none nearer than the Fortinbras Arms, whence Clement brought some in about the time that a grand butler would have taken to produce it. Felix choked at it like a child, but it brought back his strength; and Wilmet and Clement were assistants too handy to give much occasion for scolding. The shoulder and chest had suffered likewise, though partly protected by the flannel shirt.
On the patient asking how soon he might hope for the use of his arm, the gruff answer was, 'Not so soon as if you had not begun by tearing it to pieces. I can't tell. Depends on general health. May be three weeks, may be six, may be three months, before you get these places healed, if you trifle with them. Now I'll stay and see you in bed, with this arm properly settled.'
This was real kindness for a man in the middle of his dinner; and Felix stood up, finding himself more shaken than he had expected, and commanded by acclamation to betake himself to Mr. Froggatt's bedroom. He chose, however, first to go into the next room, where Cherry had sunk down, trembling and overcome, and so hysterical that her utmost powers had been taxed to prevent herself from disturbing those who could be useful.
'Here I am, all alive!' he said in a cheerful tone, that somehow had no solidity in it, and which she could hardly bear. 'Why, Cherry, you poor little thing! you have come by the worst of it!'
'Not now; I scarcely feel it. Never mind, Cherry; I'm all right now, only you will have to write those little fingers nearly off.'
'She wouldn't be looking Gorgons at me now. Where's Angel?'
Angel had been seized by Robina, and forcibly withheld from flying out after the doctor; and when assured that Lance was gone, she had dashed upstairs, and hidden herself in bed, so that Felix was obliged to go to sleep without seeing her. Remonstrate as he would, he was not allowed to get up the next morning. Mr. Rugg, who came very early, assured him that the speed of his recovery greatly depended on perfect stillness at first, and told him that he would feel the injury if he tried to move; and Wilmet would not do anything but rejoice that he was compelled to submit to discipline that was so good for the cold, a much more real subject of anxiety.