"Englishman!" retorted Aymar, smiling; and lay silent for a little. Laurent sniffed the stocks by the bed and said, "I wonder when Père Perrelet will let you get up?"
"To-morrow, I hope. He ought to be pleased with me. But I did not see him this morning; he slipped away when I was asleep."
"A lamb this morning, then! He was quite fierce in the night. I came in about three o'clock—at least I tried to come in, but he would not let me. He almost used force to keep me out. You were having a conversation with him, I fancy."
Aymar, who was turning about in the bed, became suddenly rigid, leaning on one elbow.
"I, a conversation with him! . . . I never spoke in the night . . . I was too drowsy. I hardly knew he was there. I . . ."
He broke off, and Laurent was amazed to see a flood of colour mount up from his bare throat to the very roots of his hair. It was gone in a moment, however, and he dropped back on to his pillows and began to speak of some thing else; but Laurent could see that his attention was wandering, and, thinking that he was tiring him, he left him not long afterwards.
It was about six o'clock that he heard the wheels of M. Perrelet's gig and ran out. "He's much better, Doctor!"
M. Perrelet seemed in a great hurry. "I need not have come, then," he muttered as he got down. "Do you mind holding the mare, Monsieur de Courtomer; she's a little fresh." And he went into the farmhouse with hardly a glance at him.
Laurent did as he was desired for a minute or two, then he whistled to Jeannot and made him take his place. He wanted to hear M. Perrelet's jolly voice rallying his patient and saying that he had got him there under false pretences. But instead of that it was very quiet in Aymar's room, and the young man, seeing through the half-open door that the surgeon was listening to his patient's breathing, stayed silently outside.
"Yes, there is no trace of anything," he heard M. Perrelet say, in a voice singularly free from jollity. "You have been extremely lucky . . . I shall not need to come again. Have the wound in your shoulder dressed every third or fourth day for a little; the other dressings can come off now. You may get up the day after to-morrow. If you are going to stay on here for a while I will speak to the good woman about you."