"I was waiting for them," said the Squire on a note of detailed reminiscence. "They had knocked me up and told me that the groom had come in for carriages, and I had had him in and learnt what he could tell me. I should have gone myself, but thought it better to stay and direct any preparations that had to be made. I didn't know but what there might have been serious accidents, and it turned out I was right. My wife had the idea too; but women are apt to lose their heads in these emergencies, so I stayed to see that everything was got ready. I went down into the cellar myself for a bottle of my oldest brandy. You want to keep a cool head on these occasions."
"The ladies were pretty much upset, eh?"
"Oh, I soon stopped their fuss. 'Look here, you're not hurt,' I said. 'You'd better all swallow something hot, and then tuck yourselves up in your blankets.' I packed them all off, except Virginia and Miss Dexter—oh, and Susan, who wouldn't go till she'd seen Humphrey safe; and Nancy was helping her mother; she's turning into a useful girl, that—didn't turn a hair."
"Then Miss Joan was the only one who went up?"
"Yes, she was upset—hasn't quite the head that Nancy has. She's in bed now, but there's nothing really the matter with her. We're over it all very well, and ought to be thankful for it. Depend upon it, there's a Providence that looks after these things; and I say we're not doing our duty unless we recognise it, and show that we have some sense of gratitude. Sure you've got everything you want here?"
He looked round the large comfortable room with an air of complacent proprietorship. He kept habitually to half-a-dozen rooms of the big house, and had no such feeling for it and its hoarded contents as would impel some men and most women to occasional tours of inspection and appraisal. But it was all his, and it was all as it should be. He had not put foot inside this room perhaps for years, and took it in with a pleased feeling of proprietorship and recognition.
"Oh, every mortal thing, thanks," said Bobby. "It's a jolly room, this; cheery and peaceful at the same time. Just the room to be laid up in, if you've got to be laid up."
"My grandfather died in this room," said the Squire, by way of adding to its impression of cheerfulness. "Had it before his father died and never would shift downstairs. It was done up later, but I see there are one or two of his pictures still on the walls. This was his wardrobe, too. A good piece of mahogany; they don't make furniture so solid now-a-days."
He had got up to examine one or two of the old sporting prints on the walls, which he did with informative comment. "Most of the furniture is the same," he said, now looking round him from the vantage point of the hearthrug, where he seemed more spaciously at his ease than sitting in a chair by the bedside. "Yes, they only papered it, and put a new carpet and curtains. He wouldn't have curtains at all; liked to see the sun rise, and wasn't much behind it himself as a rule. He was a fine old fellow. Have you read his diaries?"
"Yes, I have," said Bobby, stretching the truth not unduly, for the two volumes of Colonel Clinton of Kencote's record of his lifelong pursuit of fur and feathers were in every adequately furnished country house library, and had been at least dipped into by countless sportsmen. "Jolly interesting! We don't take things so seriously now-a-days. Good thing if we did. A book like that shows you that half the things we do aren't nearly as amusing as sticking at home in the country and looking about you."