"Well, Lord Verney, I believe I did something there!" said the gallant Captain, with the air of a man who has done his duty, and knows it.
"Done something! you've broke my neck, you lubber!" panted Mr. Vane Etherage, who, his legs not being available, had been placed sitting with some cloaks about him, on the bank.
Shrapnell grinned and winked expressively, and confidentially whispered, "Jolly old fellow he is--no one minds the Admiral; we let him talk."
"Lord Verney," said his lordship, introducing himself with a look and air of polite concern.
"No, my name's Etherage," said the invalid, mistaking--he fancied that Jos. Larkin, who was expounding his views of the accident grandly to Cleve Verney in the background, could not be less than a peer--"I live up there, at Hazelden--devilish near being _killed here_, by that lubber there. Why I was running at the rate of five-and-twenty knots an hour, if I was making _one_; and I remember it right well, sir, there's a check down there, just before you come to the mill-stile, and the wall there; and I'd have run my bows right into it, and not a bit the worse, sir, if that d---- fellow had just kept out of the--the--king's course, you know; and egad! I don't know now how it is--I suppose I'm smashed, sir."
"I hope not, sir. I am Lord Verney--about it; and it would pain me extremely to learn that any serious injuries, or--or--things--had been sustained, about it."
"I'll tell that in a moment," said Doctor Lyster, who was of the party, briskly.
So after a variety of twists and wrenches and pokes, Vane Etherage was pronounced sound and safe.
"I don't know how the devil I escaped!" exclaimed the invalid.
"By tumbling on _me_--very simply," replied Captain Shrapnell with a spirited laugh.
"You may set your mind at rest, Shrapnell," said the Doctor, walking up to him, with a congratulatory air. "He's all right, this time; but you had better mind giving the old fellow any more rolls of that sort--the pitcher to the well, you know--and the next time might smash him."
"I'm more concerned about smashing myself, thank you. The next time he may roll to the devil--and through whoever he pleases for me--knocked down with that blackguard old chair, and that great hulking fellow on top of me--all for trying to be of use, egad! when everyone of you funked it--and not a soul asks about _my_ bones, egad! or my neck either."