“Hullo! Charlie—dark enough to blind a horse here—all right, now. I hear you’ll be on your legs again—I can’t see you, upon my soul, not a stim a’most—before you see three Sundays—you mustn’t be tiring yourself. I’m not talking too loud, eh? Would you mind an inch or two more of the shutter open?”
“No,” said Charles, faintly. “A little.”
“There, that isn’t much. I’m beginning to see a bit now. You’ve had a stiff bout this time, Charlie, ’twasn’t typhus, nothing infectious, chiefly the upper story; but you had a squeak for it, my lad. I’d ’a came over to look after you but my hands was too full.”
“No good, Harry; could not have spoken, or seen you. Better now.”
“A bit shaky still,” said Harry, lowering his voice. “You’ll get o’er that, though, fast enough. Keeping your spirits up, I see,” and Harry winked at the decanters. “Summat better than that rot-gut claret, too. This is the stuff to put life in you. Port, yes.” He filled his brother’s glass, smelled to it, and drank it off. “So it is, and right good port. I’ll drink your health, Charlie,” he added, playfully filling his glass again.
“I’m glad you came, Harry, I feel better,” said the invalid, and he extended his thin hand upon the bed to his brother.
“Hoot! of course you do,” said Harry, looking hard at him, for he was growing accustomed to the imperfect light. “You’ll do very well, and Alice, I hear, is quite well also. And so you’ve had a visit from the old soldier, and a bit of a row, eh?”
“Very bad, Harry. Oh! God help me,” moaned Charles.
“She ain’t pretty, and she ain’t pleasant—bad without and worse within, like a collier’s sack,” said Harry, with a disgusted grimace, lifting his eyebrows and shaking his head.
“She’s headlong and headstrong, and so there has been bad work. I don’t know what’s to be done.”