“Told him to get to the dickens out of this, and he was taking me at my word. Never meant to let him get farther than the lift. Just wanted to scare him. Sorry now.”
But Lovey’s account was different.
About seven in the morning there came a streak of wan light down the shaft into which the window of his room looked out. Cantyre murmured something about going back to his own place for a bath.
“All right,” I agreed, “and you’d better get your breakfast. When you come back I can do the same. You will come back, won’t you?”
“Oh, of course! I sha’n’t be gone more than an hour. When he wakes again give him another teaspoonful of this; but don’t worry him unless he wakes.”
And just then Lovey woke. He woke with a dim smile, as a young child wakes. He smiled at Cantyre first, and then, rolling his soft blue eyes to the other side of the bed, he smiled at me.
“What’s up, Slim?” he asked, feebly. “I ain’t sick, am I?”
“No, Lovey, old son, you’re not sick; you’ve only had a bit of a fall.”
And then it came back to him.
“Oh yes. I know. Served me right, didn’t it?” Rolling his eyes now toward Cantyre, he continued: “I was just a-frightenin’ of Slim, like. Kind o’ foolish, I was. Said I was goin’ to leave him. Didn’t mean to go no farther nor the lift.”