Bill laughed.
"No. When we get home, if your Father is willing, I'll turn you loose with painters and carpenters and decorators—as long as I may always smoke, even in the 'best parlour' and as long as you don't banish me and my bottles to the garage—for we'll have to have a garage, you know, and I've spoken to Silas about that little house in the garden. There's lots of room."
"Chintz," I said dreamily, "creton,—lots of it—and another fireplace—and oodles of bookshelves. Bill, may I dig in the garden next summer?"
"I shouldn't wonder," he answered cheerfully. "You're really remarkably strong—beyond my wildest hopes. I was amazed to see how soon you recovered from the effects of the fire—"
I looked at the little scars on my hands. They would go, eventually, I knew. Bill had said so. I was a little sorry.
"Were you?" I asked. "But I had a very good doctor, and wonderful medicine—"
He kissed me, to the horror of a passing elderly couple.
"Then," said I, straightening my cap, "you'll practise in Green Hill, after all? People will say you'll be burying yourself there—"
"Let 'em," said Bill. "I shall have time, at last, for all the things I want to do. Time, ambition and encouragement. We'll have a laboratory—away from the house, so your little nose won't be offended and turn up even more—"
"It doesn't," said I, one hand to the insulted feature.