"If—if there was a chair," he said hesitatingly. "I'm not used to a sofa—and—I'm afraid you'll think me very ungrateful! Let me get the chair. Thanks, thanks!" as she swiftly pulled the sofa out of the way and put an easy-chair in its place.
"You see, it will be a change to sit up," he said apologetically.
Nell nodded. She quite understood his dislike of the part of interesting invalid.
"And there's really nothing the matter with me, don't you know," he said earnestly; "nothing but this arm, which doesn't exactly lame me. Won't you sit down?"
Nell hesitated a moment, then took a chair at the other side of the window.
"You've a splendid view here," he remarked, staring steadily out of the window, for he felt rather than saw that the girl was a little shy—not shy, but, rather, that she scarcely knew what to say.
"Oh, yes," she assented, in a voice in which there was certainly no shyness. "There is a good view from all the windows; we are so high. Won't you have your beef tea?"
"Certainly. I'd forgotten it. Don't get up. I'll——"
But Nell had got up before he could rise. As she brought the tray to him he glanced up at her. He had been staring at the bedroom wall paper for some days, and perhaps the contrast offered by Nell's fresh, young loveliness made it seem all the fresher and more striking. There was something in the curve of the lips, in the expression of the gray eyes, a "sweet sadness," as the poet puts it, which impressed him.
"It's very good to be down again," he said. She had not gone back to her chair, but leaned in the angle of the bay window, and looked down at the village below. "I seem to have been in bed for ages."