GLADWYNE GAINS A POINT
Some weeks had passed since the accident and Lisle was lying one afternoon on a couch near a window of Nasmyth’s sitting-room. Two or three Canadian newspapers lay on the floor and he held a few letters in one hand. The prospect outside was cheerless—a stretch of leaden-colored moor running back into a lowering sky, with a sweep of fir wood that had lost all distinctive coloring in the foreground. He was gazing at it moodily when Millicent came in. His face brightened at the sight of her, and he raised himself awkwardly with his uninjured arm, but she shook her head at him in reproof.
“You had orders to keep as quiet as possible for some time yet. Lie down again!”
“Keeping quiet is fast breaking me up,” he protested. “I’m quite able to move about.”
“All the same, you’re not to try.”
He looked at her with a twinkle in his eyes.
“Then I suppose I’ll have to give in. You’re a determined person. People do what you ask them without resenting it. You have an instance here, though in a general way it’s a very undignified thing to be ordered about.”
He resumed his former position and she seated herself.
“I don’t see why you should drag my character in,” she objected with a smile. “Other people who occasionally obey me don’t say such things.”
“They’re English; that accounts for a good deal. I’m inclined to think my power of expressing my feelings on any point is a gift, though it’s one that’s not uncommon in the West.”