"I and my father and Sir Percy. We're off to Lisbon. The doctor from Navares was here all yesterday afternoon. Seemed rather clever. He liked the way you'd dressed the hand; but he doesn't like Sir Percy's general health, especially his heart. So the guv'nor and I are taking him to the chief Lisbon doctor. We shall go to Oporto by sea next week—the guv'nor and I—and from there to London."
He descended the bottom step; and, after marching off Antonio by the arm to a spot out of Jackson's hearing, he added:
"Don't get the idea that I repent of helping to save the azulejos. We did the right thing. All the same, I'm not happy about it. In a sense we're to blame for Sir Percy's burnt hand. Hang it, he's a brick, after all! I couldn't stand pain like that. He doesn't give a single moan. But it isn't Sir Percy who upsets me most. It's Isabel. I said she was all head and no heart. By Jove, think of it! No heart! Yet she's hardly left his bedside these twenty-four hours. She waits on him hand and foot; and sometimes the look in her eyes is just about as much as I can stand."
"This Isabel certainly has a heart," said Antonio. "If she's unlike other people, it's because she has more heart, not less. I hope the Senhorita will not be fatigued by her journey to Lisbon."
"She isn't going."
"Not going? You don't intend to leave these ladies alone?"
"No. We're leaving them in charge of a friend. Besides, there'll be Jackson."
"The friend is a man?"
"Quite. He's a man from top to toe. His name is Francisco Manoel Oliveira da Rocha."
Before the monk could reply, they were joined by Mr. Crowberry, to whom Jackson had announced Antonio's arrival.