"How is this? How comes that pane to be broken?" I exclaimed. "The window was all right yesterday."
"It is only a bit of Polly's handiwork; or more correctly, elbow-work," answered Percival with a smile. "The girl put her elbow through the glass yesterday evening, when she brought in my supper."
"You don't mean to say that the window has remained in that state all night; with the rain drifting on to your bed, and the wind making the room like an ice-house!"
As I spoke, I was vigorously stopping up the hole with a many-tinted towel, which Percival had been using for his painting.
"I could not get at the window myself. Mrs. Bond was out taking tea with a neighbour; and Polly was in one of her little tempers: so I had just to make the best of my position," said my friend.
"But have you not suffered from this inexcusable carelessness?" I asked, seeing a look of suppressed pain on the pale countenance of the artist.
"Only a touch of neuralgia," was Percival's reply, its cheerful tone contrasting with the appearance of suffering on his pallid features.
I made the invalid as comfortable, or rather as little uncomfortable, as circumstances permitted; and then took a chair by his side.
"Percival, I cannot bear to see you in this depth of discomfort!" I cried.
"One could descend a good deal lower than this," was the playful reply. "I have a roof over my head; a good bed under me; food, when I can eat it; my palette; and my friend: and more, much more besides," Percival added more gravely, as he glanced at the Bible which lay by his side.