“So you have, poor fellow!” Earle answered, kindly; “and it is just as I have told you—you are to stay here and be nursed until you get well.”
“What! stay here?” and the man’s eyes wandered around the luxurious apartment in a look of amazement.
“Yes, in this very room. Don’t you know that you cannot bear to be removed?”
“I don’t feel much like it, that’s a fact,” he said, suppressing another groan; “but”—with a keen look into the kind face above him—“what right have you to say it?”
“The right of ownership—I am master here.”
“You!”
“Yes; you recognize me, then?”
“Of course I do; and you knew me instanter, which isn’t strange, considering one isn’t likely to forget a phiz like mine; but—but——”
“But you had no idea that you were breaking into my house when you came here last night,” interrupted Earle.
“No; I’ll be —— if I did!” was the irreverent but energetic reply.