“I am well enough to read. When will you bring me the letters?”
“I brought them when I said I would, the day you were taken ill.”
“Where are they?”
“In the first drawer, the right-hand drawer of the chest of drawers.” He turned round to it. “That is, if they have not been moved. I put the packet there myself, told nurse it was something that was not to be touched. The morphia things are in the same place. I don’t know what she thinks it is, some new and useless drug or apparatus; she has no opinion of me, you know. I used to see it night and morning, as long as you were having the injections.”
“See if it is there now.”
He went over and opened the drawer:
“It is there right enough.”
“Oh! don’t be like nurse,” I said impatiently. “I am strong enough to look at the packet.”
He gave it to me, into my hands, an ordinary brown paper parcel, tied with string and heavily, awkwardly, splotched and protected with sealing-wax. I could have sworn to his handiwork.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked.