"I shall never forgive you, nor father, nor Donald, nor anybody else. And you're not to move, sir!"
"I'm sorry, madam," said I.
"You always are. It's your favourite mood. You live on sorrow," she said, pelting me with the terse, sharp sentences. Then, for I twitched at her telling me I lived on sorrow, she melted at once, and said, "Oh, Oliver, I'm so sorry. Why did you not send for me and let me nurse it better? Surely that was my right as well as my duty."
There was no contenting her till she had seen and dressed my wound. She had brought lint and linen with her, some kind of balsam which nearly made me glad she had not had the daily dressing of my arm, and even a basin and a huge bottle of clear spring water, which were brought in from the calash by Bimbo, Lady Ogilvie's little black coachman. The hut looked like a surgery, and Donald and Bimbo got mixed up in the most laughable way in dodging about to wait on her.
"Com' oot of it!" said Donald desperately, unwinding the little black out of his plaid for the second time.
"You one big elephant in pekkaloats!" he retorted, grinning bare his big white teeth. "You tread on Bimbo, Bimbo go squash."
"How does it feel now?" asked Margaret, when her task was over.
"I shall be able to clout Donald with it in the morning," I answered.
"Tat's petter," said he, grinning with delight. "I'm thinkin' I'd suner be dinged wi' 'er again than see 'er hinging there daein' naethin'."
He took Bimbo off to the camp-fire and left us alone. We wrangled about the seating accommodation of the hut, for the cart-tail was but short, and I wanted her to have it to herself. She flouted the idea, and in the end we shared it, and I minded its shortness no longer. She would fill my pipe for me, and held a burning splinter to the bowl while I got it going. Over her doctoring she had been very pale and quiet. Now she got her colour back in the light and warmth of the fire, but she quietened down again as soon as I was smoking in comfort.