“It’s Mrs. Copas. Don’t you know me, Mr. Mole?”
“I—er. I . . . . This is your house?”
“It’s lodgings, Mr. Mole. You’ve been sick, Mr. Mole, you have. Prostrated on your back for nearly a week, Mr. Mole. You did give us all a turn, falling off the caravan like that into the King’s high road. You’d never believe the pool of blood you left in the road, Mr. Mole. But it soon dried up. . . .”
He began to have a glimmering, dimly to remember, a road, a caravan, a horse’s tail, dust, a droning voice behind him, but still the name of Copas meant nothing to him.
“Copas! Copas!” he said to himself, but aloud.
Mrs. Copas produced the spectacles and placed them on his nose. Then she leaned over him in his bed and in the loud indulgent voice with which the unafflicted humor the deaf, she said:
“Yes! Mrs. Copas. Matilda’s aunt. You know.”
That brought the whole adventure flooding back.
Matilda! The girl who wanted to speak properly, the girl whom he had found in the smelly little theater. No! Not in the theater! In the train! He writhed and went hot, and his head began to throb, and he felt a strange want of coördination among the various parts of his body.
“I’m afraid,” he said, “I’m afraid I am ill.”