"Oh, yes," he replied. "I'm in no pain." He told the falsehood as admirably as he managed his face when he was awake, but it gave him away when he was asleep. "I shall be quite well presently. I wish to Heaven they would let me be removed to the hospital!"
"That sounds rather ungrateful," said Nell, with mock indignation. "Don't you think we are taking enough care of you?"
He sighed.
"When I lie here and think of all the trouble I've given, I sometimes wish that that fellow's knife had found the right place. Though I suppose they'd have hanged him if it had."
Nell shuddered.
"Is that the only reason you regret he did not kill you?" she said.
"Am I to speak the truth?"
"Nothing else is ever worth speaking," she remarked, in a low voice.
"Well, then, yes. I am not so enamored of life as to cling to it very keenly," he said, stifling a sigh. "I don't mean because I have had a rough time of it—the majority of the sons of men find the way paved with flints—but because——What an ungrateful brute I must seem to you. Forgive me; I'm still rather weak."
"Rather!"