Nothing could have been meeker than the tone in which she spoke.
“H’m,” said Lord Torrington, “and you’re Mannix’s boy. Not much like your father. At school?”
“Yes,” said Frank. “At Haileybury.”
“What are you doing in that bath-chair with the young lady wheeling you? Is that the kind of manners they teach at Haileybury?”
“Please,” said Priscilla, speaking very gently. “It’s not his fault.”
“He has sprained his ankle,” said Sir Lucius. “He can’t walk.”
“Oh,” said Lord Torrington. “Sprained ankle, is it?”
He turned and walked back to the lawn. Sir Lucius followed him.
“Rather a bear, I call him,” said Priscilla. “But, of course, he may be one of those cases of a heart of gold inside a rough skin. You can’t be sure. We did ‘As You Like It’ last Christmas—dramatic club, you know—and Sylvia Courtney had a bit to say about a toad ugly and venomous which yet wears a precious jewel in his head. I’d say he’s just the opposite. If there is a precious jewel—and there may be—it’s not in his head. Anyhow one great comfort is that he doesn’t remember spraining your ankle.”
Frank, who recollected Lord Torrington with disagreeable distinctness, did not find any great comfort in being totally forgotten. He would have liked, though he scarcely expected, some expression of regret that the accident had occurred.