"May I go up to him, Mrs. Andrews?"
"I think, my boy, you had better stop down here for the present for both your sakes. I will let you know when you can go up to him."
So Bill crouched before the fire and waited. He heard movements upstairs and wondered what they were doing and why they didn't keep quiet, and when he would be allowed to go up. Once or twice the nurse came down for hot water, but Bill did not speak to her; but in half an hour Mrs. Andrews herself returned, looking, Bill thought, even paler than before.
"I have just slipped down to tell you, my boy, that it's all over. They gave him chloroform, and have taken his foot off."
"And didn't it hurt it awful?" Bill asked in an awed voice.
"Not in the least. He knew nothing about it, and the first thing he asked when he came to was when they were going to begin. They will be going away directly, and then you can come up and sit quietly in his room if you like. The doctors say he will probably drop asleep."
Bill was obliged to go outside again and wrestle with himself before he felt that he was fit to go up into George's room. It was a long struggle, and had George caught his muttered remonstrances to himself he would have felt that Bill had suffered a bad relapse into his former method of talking. It came out in jerks between his sobs.
"Come, none of that now. Aint yer ashamed of yerself, a-howling and a-blubbering like a gal! Call yerself a man!—you are a babby, that's what you are. Now, dry up, and let's have no more of it."
But it was a long time before he again mastered himself; then he went to the scullery and held his head under the tap till the water took away his breath, then polished his face till it shone, and then went and sat quietly down till Mrs. Andrews came in and told him that he could go upstairs to George. He went up to the bedside and took George's hand, but he could not trust himself to speak.
"Well, Bill, old boy," George said cheerily, but in a somewhat lower voice than usual, "this is a sudden go, isn't it?"