Ned was for the first time of the party, on the condition that he would be very careful, for his arm was still stiff and numb, though otherwise he was much better; but he kept pretty close to his young master, and let the men with him carry the guns and ammunition, and in several ways made silent confession that he was not so strong as he was.
Jack noticed it, and made some allusion to the fact.
“Oh, don’t you fidget about me, Mr Jack, I’m getting on glorious,” said the man quietly. “I feel as if the sun and wind up here were doing me no end of good, drinking ’em in like. Doctor said I was to take it coolly; so coolly I take it, as the sun ’ll let me, so as to get strong again as soon as I can. But, my word, what a place it is!”
“Lovely,” said Jack. “It grows upon one.”
“Ah, I should like to grow upon it,” said Ned, grinning. “I don’t feel as if I should like to go away again.”
“There’s no place like home, Ned,” said Jack, who had stopped to watch a pair of vivid sun-birds probing the tiny trumpet blossoms of a white creeper with their beaks.
“They say so, sir; but I say there’s no place like this. When are we going right up to the top?”
“When you are quite well, Ned. We should have started before now, but I asked my father to put it off till you were strong enough to carry my gun and wallet.”
Ned said nothing, but he looked as if he thought a great deal, and when he next spoke as they went on mounting the gully, it was directly after the doctor had added a lovely kingfisher to the bag.
“I say, Mr Jack, sir, of course the doctor knows a deal, but do you think he is always right?”