"Well, sir," was his hearty greeting, tuned to suitable lowness of pitch, "this is a pretty business to have brought you into! Lucky it wasn't worse, eh? I told them on the Bench to-day that you were the first in the field. There were many enquiries after you; and we've got those blackguards safely by the leg. You've got everything you want, I hope. Nurse looking after you well?"
"You wouldn't think it to look at her, but she's a bully, Mr. Clinton. If you get ill you send for somebody else."
The Squire, after a glance at the nurse's demurely smiling face, checked a laugh at the witticism. "Keep up your spirits," he said. "That's capital. You'll soon be out of the wood if you take it cheerfully. We shall make a lot of you when you come downstairs. You did well; and I've written to tell your father so."
Bobby Trench felt that a few torn muscles and splintered bones were a small price to pay for this approving geniality. On his arrival, the Squire seemed to have swung back from the acquiescent mood in which he had caused his former aversion to be invited to Kencote, and had greeted him with a manner not much more conciliatory than he had previously shown him. Bobby Trench, on reflection, had attributed his invitation to Humphrey's having imparted as much of his confidence as would secure it; and, in view of his acknowledged eligibility, had expected a rather warmer welcome than he had received, either from his host or hostess. It had seemed to him that he would have other obstacles to surmount, in order to win Joan, than those which she might be inclined to put between herself and him of her own accord. It was therefore gratifying to find the face of his host thus turned towards him, and would have been worth a substantial reduction in the sentence to be presently passed upon his assailant, if he had had the computing of his punishment.
"I must write a line to my father," he said. "I'm glad you've written to him. He doesn't suggest coming here, I suppose?"
"Well, yes, he does. We shall be pleased to see him—and her ladyship too, if she cares about it."
"Oh, save us from her ladyship!" said Bobby, unfilially. "She'd be hopeless in a sick-room; and this is a real keep-your-distance, Sundays-only sick-room, ain't it, Sarah Gamp?"
"Mr. Trench must be kept as quiet as possible," said the nurse; and the Squire, with an unintentionally obvious lift of spirits, said that he did not gather that Lady Sedbergh was anything but content to leave her son in present hands. "I've said we are looking after you as well as we can," he said. "You'll have plenty of company when you're well enough to receive it. Humphrey wants to have a look at you later on. If you hadn't been so sharp at the start, I expect he would have come in for what you got. He'd have been pretty well knocked out as it was, if it hadn't been for that young fellow, Gotch, and Dick. It's the first time anything of this sort has happened at Kencote since my grandfather's time. I don't say we haven't had to teach our local sportsmen a lesson or two occasionally, but these were regular professional ruffians from a distance—Ganton they come from—and that class of gentry sticks at nothing when he's interfered with. You see we've done very well with our young birds this year, and they must have got wind of the fact that we'd kept those coverts. That's why they turned their kind attentions on to us. They've been all round about, but mostly on more fully stocked places than mine generally is, and they've never been nabbed. Fortunately my keeper had an idea that they might pay us a visit, and had all his watchers out there. Otherwise you might have come upon them driving home, and then I don't know what would have happened. It's providential all round—the keepers being there, and you coming just in the nick of time to reinforce them. We're rid of a dangerous pest; and no particular harm is done—except to you, I'm afraid. I don't want to make light of that."
But if the Squire did not, Bobby Trench was not unwilling to do so, now that the worst was over. He saw himself an interesting, not to say petted, figure, with a perhaps undeserved but none the less convenient aura of heroism, and hoped accordingly.
"You must have got a bit of a shock when you first heard of it," he said. "I suppose that was when the ladies came in."