Chapter Fifty Three.
“And you did not know anything about it, Pete?” said Tom one day, as he sat beside the lad in Mother Warboys’ cottage, while the old woman kept on going in and out, muttering to herself, and watching them uneasily.
Pete looked very thin and hollow-cheeked, but for the first time perhaps for many years his face was perfectly clean, and his hair had been clipped off very short; while now, after passing through a phase of illness which had very nearly had a fatal result, he was slowly gaining strength.
The dog, which had been lying half asleep beside his master, suddenly jumped up, to lay its long, thin nose on Tom’s knee, and stood watching him, perfectly happy upon feeling a hand placed for treating as a sheath into which he could plunge the said nose.
“You give him too much to eat,” said Pete. Then suddenly, “No, I can’t recklect. It was blowin’ when I got in to go and sleep, ’cause she was allus grumblin’, and then somethin’ ketched me, and my arm went crack, and it got very hot, and I went to sleep. I don’t ’member no more. I say.”
“Yes.”
“I shan’t take no more doctor’s stuff, shall I?”
But he did—a great deal; and in addition soups and jellies, and sundry other preparations of Mrs Fidler’s, till he was able to go about very slowly with his arm in a sling, to where he could seat himself in some sandy hollow, to bask in the sun along with his dog.