“Why, of course he did. Broke down and made a regular fool of himself, just like a great silly-looking girl—that is,” he added hastily, “I mean, nearly—almost, you know.”
“I’m very sorry, Bob,” said Lennox gently, and his eyes looked large as he laid his hand upon his comrade’s sleeve.
“Then you don’t look it, sir. I say, don’t you go and pitch such a lame tale as this into anybody else’s ears. Here were we making a dead hero of you, and all the time—There, I’ve seen one of those little black and white Welsh birds—dippers, don’t they call ’em?—do what you did, scores of times.”
“In the dark, Bob?”
“Well—er—no—not in the dark, or of course I couldn’t have seen it. There, that’ll do. Talk about a set of fellows being sold by a lot of sentiment: we were that lot.”
“The way of the world, Bob,” said Lennox rather bitterly; “a fellow must die for people to find out that he’s a bit of a hero. But please to recollect I did nothing; it was all accident.”
“And an awfully bad accident too, old chap; only I don’t see why the doctor need have prohibited your talking about the affair. We’ve all been thinking you went through untold horrors, when it was just nothing.”
“Just nothing, Bob,” said Lennox, looking at him with a wistful smile on his lip.
“Well, no; I won’t say that, because of course it was as near as a toucher. For instance, the hole might have been too tight to let you through, and then—Ugh! Drew, old chap, don’t let us talk about it any more. It’s a hot day, and my face is wet with perspiration, but my spine feels as if it had turned to ice. Yes, it was as near as a toucher. I would rather drop into an ambush of the Boers a dozen times over than go through such a half-hour as that again.”