"And after that you must transport yourself over to Burnfield with all possible dispatch, and procure a cart, car, gig, wagon, carriage, wheelbarrow, or any other vehicle wherein my remains can be hauled to that thriving town, for walking, you perceive, is a moral and physical impossibility."
"All right!" said Richmond. "Here, take my arm. How will you manage to get up this steep bank? Do you think you can walk it?"
"Nothing like trying," said Charley, as leaning on his brother's arm he limped along, while Georgia went before to show them the way. "Ah, that was a twinge. The gout must be a nice thing to have if it is at all like this. I never properly felt for those troubled with that fashionable and aristocratic disease before, but the amount of sympathy I shall do for the future will be something terrifying. Here we are; now then, up we go."
But Master Charley found that "up we go" was easier said than done. He attempted to mount the bank, but at the first effort he recoiled, while a flush of pain overspread his pale features.
"No go, trying to do that; get up there I can't if they were to make me Khan of Tartary for doing it. Ah—h—h! there's another twinge, as if a red-hot poker had been plunged into it. The way that ankle can go into the aching business requires to be felt to be appreciated."
Though he spoke lightly, yet two scarlet spots, forced there by the intense pain, burned on either cheek.
Richmond looked at him anxiously, for he loved his wild, harum-scarum, handsome young brother with a strong love.
"Oh, he can't walk; I know it hurts him; what will we do?" said Georgia, in a tone of such intense motherly solicitude that, in spite of his painful ankle, Charley smiled faintly.
"I know what I shall do," said Richmond, abruptly. "I shall carry him."
And suiting the action to the word, the elder brother—older only by two or three years, but much stronger and more compactly built than the somewhat delicate Charley—lifted him in his arms and proceeded to bear him up the rocks.