'I say, is this fancy, or have you had the doctor?'
'Four.'
'Four doctors! That's enough to account for anybody thinking anything the matter with him. Cheer up, Squire,' and he assumed a superior air of wisdom and encouragement that made Felix look amused enough to persuade the boy of the effect of his words—'don't be croaked out of spirits. Sprains are nasty things, and go on no one knows how long; but I'll bet anything you like that nothing else is the matter with you but the doctors, and poking over that desk. It's a splendid day, I thought of going up the river. Will you come?'
To which Felix consented, and Bernard, when repairing to Geraldine to propose her joining the party, said, 'It will be good for the Squire. I say, what makes him so down in the mouth?'
'Of course, he is disappointed about you.'
'Pish! I didn't mean that, but about himself and the sprain.'
'I don't wonder, dear Felix!' said Cherry. 'It is very wearing to feel it at every movement, and it is depressing to be so set aside from active life. I only wonder at his patience.'
So Bernard continued to repose in his consoling fiction of low spirits, but he was so far amenable as to think himself 'grinding frightfully hard' with a tutor at Ewmouth, and dislike of the said grist impelled him to propose going out to Carrigaboola; but after a day's shooting with him, Fulbert declined the proposal in no measured terms, when he had seen Master Bernard's daintiness of equipment, disgust at difficulties, dependence on luncheon, and distaste at loading himself with anything that could be carried by another.
And Cherry? How did the quickest witted of all avoid the shadow of the cloud visible to so many?
Partly there was the resistance of a sensitive mind, after hosts of imaginary panics, to a real fear—partly her brother was on his guard against distressing her, and often commanded his countenance, when if alone with Clement, it would have betrayed the pang, and besides, her charm of manner often beguiled his weariness; but above all, her want of perception was due to her absorption in little Gerald.