“Colin seems to have the same conviction about you,” she said. “Here he comes: I am told he is terribly stern if your visitors stay too long. Julia says he is the one person of whom the nurse is afraid!”
Colin came in and stood at the foot of the bed, very tall and good to look at. We laughed at each other.
“I thought my patient might be tired,” he said. “But you are doing her good, Mrs. McNab.”
“I was worrying over something that Mrs. McNab has explained to me,” I said. “Now I shan’t worry any more. Colin, isn’t it a good thing you made me practise boxing with you? I should never have landed my best efforts on Bence if it hadn’t been for that!”
He stared at me.
“Why, I thought you had forgotten all about it,” he said. “Have you been lying there gloating in secret over your savagery?”
“Something like that,” I laughed. “I feel I ought to have done better—but a dressing-gown does cramp one’s style with a poker!”
He laughed too, but there was something in his eyes that brought a lump into my throat.
“You blessed old kid!” he said softly. That was a good deal for Colin to say, and it told me more than if anyone else had talked for a week.
They brought me downstairs a few days later, looking very interesting in a wonderful blue teagown that Mrs. McNab had ordered for me from Melbourne. Colin carried me, for my knees still bent under me in the most disconcerting fashion when I tried to walk, and put me on a lounge in the garden, with a rug over my feet. Most of the house-party had gone away, but there were enough left to make quite a crowd, after my quiet time in my room, and they all made a ridiculous fuss over me. Dicky Atherton and Harry McNab plied me with unlimited offers of food. Even Beryl was quite human; she brought me my tea herself, and actually ran for an extra cushion. It was all very disconcerting, but when I got used to it, it was lovely to be outside again. Judy and Jack had planted a huge Union Jack at the head of my couch. They sat down, one on either side of me, and declined to yield their positions to anyone. “You may think you own her,” Judy said to Colin, her nose in the air. “But we’re the Band!”