"When do you think we can move him to Melbourne?" Mr. Lester asked.
"Oh—almost any time. Let him have a few days' rest. I should advise you to get passages on one of the big mail steamers; the inter-state boats are more apt to kick about if there's bad weather in the Bight. Not that you should have bad weather now."
"The Occident is due next week," the second doctor put in. "She's one of their newest boats—you should be able to get a deck cabin on her for the boy. I know the manager here, Mr. Lester; would you care to go round with me and arrange matters?"
So Dick, lying wearily on his balcony that afternoon, still stiff and sore from the morning's handling, heard with relief that they were to be homeward bound.
"That's jolly," he said. "I'd like to see Melbourne again—and the fellows at school. Will the old doc. let Bottles and Nuge and Teddy come to see me, do you think, mother?"
"Of course he will," Mrs. Lester said. "They will be wild to hear about your adventures—think of the untold sums they have spent on wiring to you!" The story of the Northern blacks' raid upon Narrung had been sent to the papers in the Eastern States, and Dick had been inundated with telegrams from his school.
"Well, it will be great to see them," he said. "Perhaps one of them would come up to Kurrajong next holidays, mother; I expect I'll be sitting up by then, so it wouldn't be so very dull for them." He grinned. "Old Bottles is going to be a doctor—it would be handy for him to practise on me!"
"Thank you," said the nurse hurriedly; "I'd rather not!"
"So would I," agreed Dick. "Just you keep your eye on him, though, nurse; he's safe to have some patent pill of his own that he'll be mad keen to give me!"
"I will be there," said the nurse, with a grim determination not to quit her patient's side during any invasion by Bottles.