“I do, to some extent,” said Leigh, smiling faintly. Then, to the woman, “You can go back now. Call me at once if there is any change.”
The two trembling women went out, and after another feeble protest Claud manfully took off his coat, and acting under Leigh’s instructions, properly bandaged the painful wound made by Garstang’s bullet, which had struck high up in Leigh’s arm, and passed right through, a very short distance beneath the skin.
“A mere nothing,” said Leigh, coolly, as the wound was plugged and bandaged, the table napkins coming in handy. “Why, Wilton, you’d make a capital dresser.”
“Ugh!” ejaculated the young man, with a shudder. “I should like to be down on one. Sick as a cat.”
“Take a glass of wine, man,” said Leigh, smiling.
“I just will,” said Claud, gulping one down. “Thank you, since you are so pressing, I think I will take another. Hah! that puts Dutch courage in a fellow,” he sighed, after a second goodly sip. “It’s good port, Garstang. Here’s bad health to you—you beast.”
He drank the rest of his wine.
“I say, doctor, you don’t expect me to help timber his head, do you?”
Leigh nodded, as he drew his shirt-sleeve down over his bandages.
“But the brute would have shot me, too.”