"I am having my knowledge of English extended, sir," responded one of them from the bed, smiling faintly. "M. de Courtomer found an English book on the shelf there, and he is reading it to me. . . . Are those the pillows you promised me this morning?"
He still looked extraordinarily bloodless, and even thinner, but there was more life about him. Laurent had got up, and stood glancing from M. Perrelet to L'Oiseleur with an air of being rather proud of his charge. Indeed, to-day was an important milestone; having, a couple of days ago, been promoted from his recumbent position to about three pillows, La Rocheterie was now going to be propped up with many into a sitting posture for an hour or two—hence the orderly's load. And in a few minutes the little doctor and Laurent proceeded so to prop him.
"You may feel a trifle giddy at first," remarked the former, surveying him critically. "When you are tired, ask your nurse to take them away again. . . . And this is your English book? H'm. Le Vicaire de Vackfeel. What is this Vackfeel—a place or a person? Once I could read English, though not speak it. I read the poet Shackspeer."
"Monsieur Perrelet," observed Laurent, "you are a mine of knowledge, and of everything desirable. And, as you have brought M. de la Rocheterie all those plump pillows, you could no doubt bring me what I want."
"And what is that, my boy?" asked the surgeon, looking up from the pages of Goldsmith which, sitting on the edge of his patient's bed, he was turning over, his lips very much pursed.
"A letter," responded M. de Courtomer. "A letter from a lady—from my mother, in short. Though I do not know why you should play postman. I suppose that if I get a reply to mine, which I wrote—oh, a fortnight ago—it will come through the same channel, those gentlemen downstairs?"
"You had left yours open, I suppose?"
"Yes, but I contrived to put in a good deal of what I wanted to say. And now I wish to hear how my dear mother is bearing my loss."
"I cannot tell you that," replied the little doctor, twinkling, "but any ordinary—or extraordinary—outside news I can supply you with, if you are pining for it. To-day, however, I have heard nothing in particular."
"But might you not get into trouble for telling us, if there were?"