‘I see it’s not yet five o’clock. We’ll steal quietly off to bed, and have three or four hours sleep before we show ourselves.’
CHAPTER XIII
A SICK-ROOM
Cecil Walpole occupied the state-room and the state-bed at Kilgobbin Castle; but the pain of a very serious wound had left him very little faculty to know what honour was rendered him, or of what watchful solicitude he was the object. The fever brought on by his wound had obliterated in his mind all memory of where he was; and it was only now—that is, on the same morning that the young men had arrived at the castle—that he was able to converse without much difficulty, and enjoy the companionship of Lockwood, who had come over to see him and scarcely quitted his bedside since the disaster.
It seems going on all right,’ said Lockwood, as he lifted the iced cloths to look at the smashed limb, which lay swollen and livid on a pillow outside the clothes.
‘It’s not pretty to look at, Harry; but the doctor says “we shall save it”—his phrase for not cutting it off.’
‘They’ve taken up two fellows on suspicion, and I believe they were of the party here that night.’
‘I don’t much care about that. It was a fair fight, and I suspect I did not get the worst of it. What really does grieve me is to think how ingloriously one gets a wound that in real war would have been a title of honour.’
‘If I had to give a V.C. for this affair, it would be to that fine girl I’d give it, and not to you, Cecil.’