"Do you realise, young man, that you're jesting with my professional reputation!" said Neil Fraser severely.
"Not to mention with my best leg!" put in Dick. He flung a cushion with a quick movement that found Nugent unprepared. It took him in the face, and he subsided on top of Teddy, who received him without any gratification.
"Get off, young Nuge!" he said, hurling him away. "Trot up and down again, Lester; I want to see."
"Not if I know it," said Dick, lowering himself gently on a couch. "When you haven't used your legs for about seven ages they don't make exercise exactly a joke. And that's my third walk to-day. Trot Bottles up and down; he needs it."
"Don't you; the balcony won't stand it," grinned Nugent. "There's a notice somewhere that nothing over ten tons is allowed to trot on this floor!"
"Don't listen to them, Bottles," said Mrs. Lester, laughing. "These skinny people are always jealous of good, honest weight!"
"Bless 'em, I don't mind," Bottles answered cheerfully. "Keeps 'em happy and good, and then they're no trouble, the pretty dears!" He grinned in a fatherly way at Dick and Nugent.
"When I can put on the pace a bit," said Dick with emphasis, "I'll teach you to call me a pretty dear! Pound him to-night in the dormer for me, Nuge, will you? He's got horribly above himself since I've been away."
They were all on the hospital balcony, where, on a table, were the remains of afternoon tea. Mrs. Lester sat near Dick's couch—he still liked to feel that she was within reach of his hand. On a cushion beside her chair Merle was curled up; she held jealously to her position as "Legs," and looked forward with some dismay to the day when Dick would need her no longer. The three boys had come racing across from school directly the unfeeling claims of education ceased to hold them. Afternoon tea with Dick had become an institution that was seriously threatening the claims of cricket, insomuch that Melville, the school captain, was endeavouring to screw himself to the point of exercising his authority in the matter. He found it difficult to be authoritative. It was not so very long since the day when Mr. and Mrs. Lester had kept their vigil in the Quiet Street, when, in the school chapel, the boys had gathered while the chaplain prayed for Dick Lester, whose feet were in the Valley of the Shadow.
Melville himself had been to tea on the balcony since then, and it is safe to say that at no time had Dick been so near pride as when the great man, rather shy and tongue-tied at first in the presence of Mrs. Lester, had sat on his couch and talked to him, a scrubby junior, as an equal!