"You don't think that I should be able to ride, doctor?"
"Certainly not in less than a month, probably not in six weeks."
"Then I must be carried," Philip said. "I should work myself into the fever you talk of, if I were to be kept here.
"What are your plans, Desmond?"
"I have not thought of them, yet. At any rate, I shall stay with you till you are well enough to start."
"I could not think of that, Desmond."
"You have no say in the matter, Philip. In the first place, you will get on all the faster for my being with you. In the next place, ten days of my leave are already expired, and were we to go on straight to Pointdexter, I should only have a few days there before starting back for Paris, and I must therefore postpone my visit to some future time. I can stay here ten days, accompany you some four days on your journey, and then turn back again."
"A nice way of spending a month's holiday!" Philip grumbled.
"It will be a holiday that I shall long look back to," Desmond said quietly, "and with pleasure. I do not say that I should not have enjoyed myself at the baron's chateau, for that I should have done; but the adventures that I have gone through will remain in my mind, all my life, as having gained the friendship of yourself, the baron, and his daughter."
"Friendship seems to me too mild a word for it, Desmond. You have earned a gratitude so deep that it will be a pain to us, if we cannot show it in deeds."