Then let the reader believe, that whatsoever is commonplace in my story is my own invention. Whatsoever may seem extravagant or startling is most likely to be historic fact, else I should not have dared to write it down, finding God’s actual dealings here much too wonderful to dare to invent many fresh ones for myself.
Lancelot, who had had a severe concussion of the brain and a broken leg, kept his bed for a few weeks, and his room for a few more. Colonel Bracebridge installed himself at the Priory, and nursed him with indefatigable good-humour and few thanks. He brought Lancelot his breakfast before hunting, described the run to him when he returned, read him to sleep, told him stories of grizzly bear and buffalo-hunts, made him laugh in spite of himself at extempore comic medleys, kept his tables covered with flowers from the conservatory, warmed his chocolate, and even his bed. Nothing came amiss to him, and he to nothing. Lancelot longed at first every hour to be rid of him, and eyed him about the room as a bulldog does the monkey who rides him. In his dreams he was Sinbad the Sailor, and Bracebridge the Old Man of the Sea; but he could not hold out against the colonel’s merry bustling kindliness, and the almost womanish tenderness of his nursing. The ice thawed rapidly; and one evening it split up altogether, when Bracebridge, who was sitting drawing by Lancelot’s sofa, instead of amusing himself with the ladies below, suddenly threw his pencil into the fire, and broke out, à propos de rien—
‘What a strange pair we are, Smith! I think you just the best fellow I ever met, and you hate me like poison—you can’t deny it.’
There was something in the colonel’s tone so utterly different from his usual courtly and measured speech, that Lancelot was taken completely by surprise, and stammered out,—
‘I—I—I—no—no. I know I am very foolish—ungrateful. But I do hate you,’ he said, with a sudden impulse, ‘and I’ll tell you why.’
‘Give me your hand,’ quoth the colonel: ‘I like that. Now we shall see our way with each other, at least.’
‘Because,’ said Lancelot slowly, ‘because you are cleverer than I, readier than I, superior to me in every point.’
The colonel laughed, not quite merrily. Lancelot went on, holding down his shaggy brows.
‘I am a brute and an ass!—And yet I do not like to tell you so. For if I am an ass, what are you?’
‘Heyday!’