"Please do not trouble to wait," he said to Miss Esther in the afternoon, when he found her preparing to sit with him. "I shall be quite happy if you will have the goodness to give me the paper and the cigarette case. Thanks."
When she had gone, having lacked the courage to tell him that tobacco smoke had never yet polluted the sacred mustiness of the best spare room, Paul lay back with a sense of relief, and began to review his situation gloomily.
"How I could have made such an ass of myself, I don't know," he murmured. "Foisting myself on complete strangers for six or seven weeks at least! And such strangers, too! Good Lord, how shocked the dear lady looked when I said I hadn't a relation left who cared a hang whether I was alive or dead. I must tell her, as an antidote, that my father was a parson; I have known that to take effect in the most ungodly circles. Perhaps, if I could swear I should feel better. But I am not a swearing man; besides, she might leave me to that painfully dull maid if I did. And that would be a pity," he added reflectively; "for, at least, she does know how to make a fellow as comfortable as a fractured leg will let him be."
A sudden shoot of pain made him turn his head wearily on one side. He had told the doctor, only that morning, that it was nothing, and that he did not suffer much; and then had been unreasonably disappointed at the professional verdict that it was a simple fracture, and presented no complications. He would have liked to be an interesting case, at least.
"I wonder if I am likely to get a glimpse of that jolly little girl," he went on, looking idly at the faded photograph opposite. "It is probably the one who steadied my head in the dark, last night; the one who laughs, too. A Philistine place like this could never produce two of them. However, I shall never find out as long as I am nursed by that dragon. And after all, why trouble about it? It shows what a baleful effect idleness can have upon a man, when an unsophisticated parson's daughter with a jolly laugh can--hullo!"
He heard voices on the landing, and listened eagerly. There was the sound of a scuffle and a stifled laugh, and some one shook the door by falling clumsily against it.
