"I'd have a pain in a leg meself if I laid it up to be lookin' at it, and it only swollen and tender," remarked Mahaffy, with brutal frankness. "Unless it's sympathy you're after, Lancelot, and you do the Tango in your own room so as to soon fill out and get ready for more service."
At the thought of Lancelot in khaki gravely sitting before the looking-glass, Mrs. Freyne said: "Oh, good gracious. Dearest George, do you think?" and dropped three stitches of her involved muffler.
"Well, he should use it," observed the family practitioner, getting up. "He was always nervous from the hour he came into the world, and used to be peepin' at his bottle as if it might bite him. And now, Maria Louisa Deane has the measles—German, too—and over there I must get before I see roast goose to-night."
They tied pheasants on to the old fellow's bicycle and hung a basket of grapes on the handle and sent him off.
Lancelot, in offended majesty, sat gloomily among his cushions. Presently, when it was time to dress for dinner and get into slacks—he would wear no civilian clothes—he suddenly put both sticks into one hand, set his foot on the ground and collapsed against Gheena's shoulder with a strangled groan of anguish.
"There is really no use trying if it makes you make noises like that," said Matilda Freyne kindly. "Is there, Dearest? Though it's probably all nerves and really doesn't hurt a bit; and if you are going to try to use it, Naylour and George must help you. Gheena is not strong enough."
The invalid tearfully murmured that he wanted Gheena alone. His glance of reproach at Mrs. Freyne was a bitter one.
"He is a humbug," said Psyche, accepting Gheena's help in dressing. She had brought no maid. "And I do not care for your big lady in silk stockings."
When Gheena called Violet Weston a darling, Miss Delorme shook her head vigorously.
"The only thing that's wrong with her, Darby says," went on Gheena, "is that she wears a number eight shoe on a number ten foot and it hampers her. They're not such big feet really, if she did not squeeze them in those high-heeled shoes and wear such bright stockings."