“I’m sorry there should have been any fresh unpleasantness,” he said. “Can’t we be friends, Mr Terry?”
“That’s just what I want to be, Belton,” cried Terry, eagerly, seizing the proffered hand. “I’m afraid I did interfere a bit too much to-day.”
“And somehow,” mused Syd, as he went on to the hospital, “I can’t feel as if it’s all genuine. It’s like shaking hands with a sole and five sprats. Ugh! how cold and fishy his hand did feel.”
The lieutenant was lying in the hospital with his eyes closed, and Pan was bathing his father’s brow with water, using his injured arm now and then out of forgetfulness, but putting it back in the sling again as soon as it was observed.
“Arn’t much the matter with it, I know, Pan-y-mar,” the injured man whispered, as Syd halted by the door to see how his new patient seemed, trembling terribly in his ignorance at having to put his smattering of surgery to the test once more.
“Ah, you dunno, father,” grumbled the boy. “You’ve ketched it this time. I don’t talk about getting no rope’s-ends to you.”
“No, my lad, you don’t. I should jest like to ketch you at it. But you won’t see me going about in a sling.”
“Ah, you dunno yet, father.”
“Don’t I? You young swab; why, if I had my head took off with a shot, I wouldn’t howl as you did.”
“Why, yer couldn’t, father,” said Pan, grinning.