“You’ll soon be up and doing, and then you’ll begin to teach me, won’t you?”
“How would it be if you came and read to me every evening before the play? Then we could begin at once.”
“Shall I?” She warmed to the plan. “What shall I read?”
“You might read your book about Napoleon.”
“Oh! Lovely!”
Mrs. Copas returned to give him his medicine and to tuck him up for the night.
“What day is it?” he asked.
“Saturday.”
“Are there any letters for me?” He remembered then that there could be none, that he was no longer his old self, that an explosion in his affairs had hurled him out of his old habitual existence and left him bruised and broken among strangers.
“I would like,” he said, “to shave to-morrow.”