“Yes, it was.”
“Then it will be before night. Is it quite certain, uncle?”
“Mr Annanby thinks so. Your foot is too much hurt ever to be cured. Do you think you can bear it, Hugh?”
“Why, yes, I suppose so. So many people have. It is less than some of the savages bear. What horrid things they do to their captives,—and even to some of their own boys! And they bear it.”
“Yes; but you are not a savage.”
“But one may be as brave, without being a savage. Think of the martyrs that were burnt, and some that were worse than burnt! And they bore it.”
Mr Shaw perceived that Hugh was either in much less pain now, or that he forgot everything in a subject which always interested him extremely. He told his uncle what he had read of the tortures inflicted by savages, till his uncle, already a good deal agitated, was quite sick: but he let him go on, hoping that the boy might think lightly in comparison of what he himself had to undergo. This could not last long, however. The wringing pain soon came back; and as Hugh cried, he said he bore it so very badly, he did not know what his mother would say if she saw him. She had trusted him not to fail; but really he could not bear this much longer.
His uncle told him that nobody had thought of his having such pain as this to bear: that he had often shown himself a brave little fellow; and he did not doubt that, when this terrible day was over, he would keep up his spirits through all the rest.
Hugh would have his uncle go down to tea. Then he saw a gown and shawl through the curtain, and started up; but it was not his mother yet. It was only Mrs Watson come to sit with him while his uncle had his tea.
Tea was over, and the younger boys had all gone up to bed, and the older ones were just going when there was a ring at the gate. It was Mrs Proctor; and with her the surgeon from London.