"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.
"Come in, do!" shouted Paul desperately, and the door opened with a jerk.
"I say, did we disturb you, or anything? I'm beastly sorry; but Kitty would rot so, and I couldn't help it, really. And, I say, I'm awfully sorry you're so hit up."
It was Ted, apologetic and self-conscious. Paul smiled encouragingly; it was at least some one to talk to, even if it was a boy under twenty, for whose kind he had as a rule little sympathy. He could see there was some one else too, on the landing outside; so he smiled a little more. It pleased him to have his curiosity satisfied, though perhaps he would not have liked it to be called curiosity.
"You see, Kitty will play so poorly," pursued Ted, plunging his hands in his pockets to give himself more confidence. "I shouldn't have dreamt of bothering you like this, if it hadn't been for Kitty."
"I am quite content to believe that it was the fault of Miss Kitty, whose acquaintance I have not the honour of possessing," said Paul gravely. "But won't you come in a little further, and explain matters?"
Ted came in a good deal further, just then, assisted by an unexpected push between his shoulders.
"It's so poor of Kitty; and it isn't my fault, I swear it isn't!" said Ted, in an injured tone. "You see, she wants me to say—Oh, hang, Kit, do let a fellow explain! Well, she says that—that—well, she wants to come in too, don't you see? She doesn't see why she should have to go and talk to horrid old men in the village, when they won't let her come in and talk to you; at least, that's what she says. And she says it's all rotten humbug—Well, you know you did! But Miss Esther will about kill me when she finds it out. Kitty never thinks of that, she's so poor."
Paul smiled again, partly at himself for being young enough to appreciate the childishness of the situation.
"Where is Miss Esther?" he asked, like a man, wisely.
"Oh, she's out right enough; but still—"
"Yes," said Paul reflectively, "I recognise that there are still difficulties in the way. But don't you think, as I am decidedly as much afflicted as the other horrid old men you mentioned, and as Miss Esther is out, that—we might all agree to vote it rotten humbug? Just for a few minutes, you know!"
And Katharine, who had been listening anxiously to every word, slipped into the room at this point of the negotiations, and closed the door; nodded cheerfully to Paul as though she had known him all her life, and dropped sideways on the chair at the end of his bed.
"I knew you wouldn't mind," she said. "Ted declared you would; but Ted's so awfully dense sometimes, isn't he?"
Paul was willing to admit that, on this occasion, Ted had been remarkably dense; but he only murmured some commonplace about the correctness of her judgment, and the honour he felt at her discrimination.
"Oh, I knew!" said Katharine confidently. "I am never wrong about people. Ted is. He makes fearful hashes about people; I always have to tell him who is to be trusted, and who isn't."
"I should like to know," observed Paul, "how you manage to know so much about people whom you have never seen before—myself, for instance!"
"But I have seen you before! Oh, I forgot; of course, you didn't know. I was with daddy last night when he came to fetch you. Don't you remember? I suppose you were too bad to notice much."
"That must have been it," assented Paul. "I just remember some one supporting my head, or it may have been my shoulders—"
"It was your head. That was me!" cried Katharine, with animation. "Wasn't Ted jealous when I told him—that's all!"
"I wasn't," said Ted. "But it was just like Kitty. Girls always do have all the luck."
"I am glad," said Paul drily, "that at least one of you was fortunate enough to view my discomfiture."
Ted laughed, but Katharine became suddenly thoughtful.
"I was very sorry for you, I was really," she said.
"Oh, no, excuse me—merely interested," said Paul.
Katharine reflected again.
"Perhaps I was; how caddish of me!" she said, and looked at him doubtfully. Paul raised his eyebrows; to be taken seriously by a woman, at such an early stage of her acquaintance, was a new experience to him.
"Oh, please," he exclaimed, laughing, "don't be truthful whatever you are! It's much more charming to think that you were sorry for me."
Katharine still seemed puzzled. She turned to Ted instinctively, and he came to her rescue.
"She thought you were awfully plucky and all that; she told me so. I was rather sick about it, of course; but, after all, it wasn't really worth minding because you were hit up so completely, you see."
"You are a singularly brutal pair of young people," observed Paul, glancing from one to the other. "I should like you to have the feel of my leg for half an hour. I fancy you would find yourselves 'hit up,' as you are pleased to call it."
"Oh, but we're not a bit brutal," objected Katharine. "Ted never can help saying what he thinks at the moment—that's how it is. It's because he shows all his feelings, don't you see?"
"You mustn't think Kitty is unfeeling because she doesn't say things," continued Ted. "She hates spoofing people, and she never says things she doesn't mean. She doesn't always say them when she does mean them; it's rather rough on a fellow sometimes, I think," he added feelingly.
The garden gate swung to, and they sprang to their feet simultaneously.
"Shall we scoot?" asked Ted, who seemed the more apprehensive of the two.
"I suppose so. Bother!" said Katharine regretfully. Ted was already gone, but she still lingered. The flying visit to Paul, instead of satisfying her curiosity about him, had only roused it still more; and she sauntered half absently towards him, without the least pretence of being