“The deuce it did!” I exclaimed. “You must have been puffed up with pride.”
My guardian’s jaw set itself rigidly. “I was too busy,” was his grim answer. “You see, the end of the statement said there was no hope that you could survive. And when I got here I found you with fever, delirium, one leg shot up, four bits of shell in your head, a fine case of brain concussion. That was nearly three weeks ago, and it seems more like three years!”
An idea, at this point, made me fix a searching gaze on him.
“By the way,” I asked accusingly, “how did you happen to arrive so opportunely on this side? It seemed as natural as possible to find you settled here waiting for my eyes to open; but on second thoughts I suppose you didn’t fly?”
He looked extraordinarily embarrassed.
“Why,” he growled at length, “I had business. I got a cablegram soon after you left New York. The thing was confoundedly inconvenient, but I had no choice about it.”
“Dunny,” I said weakly, but sternly, “you didn’t bring me up to tell whoppers, not bare-faced ones like that, anyhow, that wouldn’t deceive the veriest child. What earthly business could you have over here in war-time? Own up, now, and take your medicine like a man.”
His guilty air was sufficient answer.
“Well, Dev,” he acknowledged, “it was your cable. That Gibraltar mess was a nasty one, and I didn’t like its looks. I’m getting old, and you’re all I’ve got; so I took a passport and caught the Rochambeau. Not, of course, that I doubted your ability to take care of yourself, my boy—”
“Didn’t you? You might have,” I admitted with some ruefulness, “if you had known I was bucking both the Allied governments and the picked talent of the Central powers. It was too much. I was riding for a fall, and I got it. But I don’t mind saying, Dunny, I’m infernally glad you came.”