“Have done with your gibberish,” he cried, in a surly tone. “For an English blow an English remedy. Yer might have broken my steps, marm,” he said to me, with a catch in his throat. Burbidge is full of kindness; “but at times his tongue is as rough as pig bristles,” as his old wife, Hester says, and just then he was thoroughly angry with me for having hurt myself chasing “mere wild birds, like a village loseller.”
Then he called to his boys, and somehow, with their aid, I got back to the house. The children were both in tears.
“She has broken her leg,” cried Bess. “Mothers can, I know it, besides beggars and princes.”
But Hals would not allow this, and said, with dogged steadfastness, “Mothers don’t break like dolls, I know that.”
For this remark Burbidge commended him. “Stick to it, young squire,” he said; and then he bade Roderick run for the doctor, like greased lightning.
After a minute or two, Nana begged all to go out, and took possession of the injured knee, and began to bathe it with a decoction of arnica and boiled lily-root, which last is an excellent remedy, still used in Shropshire, for cuts or bruises. Gradually the pain diminished, and as I lay, feeling much shaken and a little foolish, the doctor made his appearance.
He begged me to remain on the sofa, to rest, and discontinue all exercise for the present; and before going wrote out the prescription for another lotion. When he had left, I weakly suggested I would use both, and hoped for the best. But this “trimming” course did not pacify Nana, who declared “he might say what he liked, but Dr. Browne had no call to change her lotion.”
After luncheon I felt better, and was carried out on a sofa to the lawn on the east side of the house, some favourite books were placed near me, and the letters I had received that morning. Burbidge was by that time very penitent and full of compunction, now that he was no longer terrified, and was sure that my leg was not broken. He brought me a sprig of lavender, “to have summat nice to sniff,” and assured me “that them birds of mine in the aviary should be looked after proper;” and added, by way of gloomy consolation, “I wouldn’t let ’em nohow suffer, not even if you’d broken both legs.”
When Burbidge had left me, I took up my letters sadly, and felt grieved that I must forego that week the pleasure of calling on friends and of visiting their lovely gardens, decked in the full glory of summer; and that I could not see, as I had intended to do, the stately garden of Cundover, the glowing borders of Burwarton, or the splendour of the Crimson Rambler at Benthall. All these beautiful things, as far as I was concerned, must remain unseen, and flower their sweetness away in the desert air.
Not even my own garden might I visit, for my orders were to lie down and not to put foot to the ground for some days; so I said sadly to myself I must only think of gardens. I remained therefore quite quiet, for the children had both gone off to tea at the Red House, and Mouse, and I were left alone, to enjoy each other’s society.