"We must,"—said Mr. Bunce, after a long pause—"be careful. We have got out of bed, but we must not walk much. The heart is weak—we must avoid any strain upon it. We must sit quiet."
Mary was listening attentively, and nodded her agreement to this pronouncement.
"We must,"—proceeded Mr. Bunce, laboriously—"sit quiet. We may get up every day now,—a little earlier each time, remaining up a little later each time,—but we must sit quiet."
Again Mary nodded gravely. Helmsley looked quickly from one to the other. A close observer might have seen the glimmer of a smile through his fuzzy grey-white beard,—for his thoughts were very busy. He saw in Bunce another subject whose disinterested honesty might be worth dissecting.
"But, doctor——" he began.
Mr. Bunce raised a hand.
"I'm not 'doctor,' my man!" he said—"have no degree—no qualification—no diploma—no anything whatever but just a little, a very little common sense,—yes! And I am simply Bunce,"—and here a smile spread out all the furrows in his face and lit up his eyes; "Or, as the small boys call me, Dunce!"
"That's all very well, but you're a doctor to me," said Helmsley—"And you've been as much as any other doctor could possibly be, I'm sure. But you tell me I must sit quiet—I don't see how I can do that. I was on the tramp till I broke down,—and I must go on the tramp again,—I can't be a burden on—on——"
He broke off, unable to find words to express himself. But his inward eagerness to test the character and attributes of the two human beings who had for the present constituted themselves as his guardians, made him tremble violently. And Mr. Bunce looked at him with the scrutinising air of a connoisseur in the ailments of all and sundry.
"We are nervous,"—he pronounced—"We are highly nervous. And we are therefore not sure of ourselves. We must be entirely sure of ourselves, unless we again wish to lose ourselves. Now we presume that when 'on the tramp' as we put it, we were looking for a friend. Is that not so?"