“I certainly never saw any one alter so greatly as Lady Jenkins has altered in the last few months,” spoke Mrs. Knox. “She is not like the same woman.”
“I’m sure I wish we had never gone that French journey!” said Mina. “She has never been well since. Oh, here’s Arnold!”
Dr. Knox had come straight into the garden from Jenkins House. Dicky rushed up to besiege his arms and legs; but, as Dicky was in a state of flour—which he had just put upon himself in the kitchen, or had had put upon him by the maids—the doctor ordered him to keep at arm’s-length; and the doctor was the only person who could make himself obeyed by Dicky.
“You have been to see Lady Jenkins, Arnold,” said his step-mother. “How is she?”
“Nothing much to boast of,” lightly answered Dr. Knox. “Johnny, are you ready?”
“I am going to be a soldier, Arnold,” put in Dicky, dancing a kind of war-dance round him. “Captain Collinson is going to make me a captain like himself.”
“All right,” said Arnold. “You must grow a little bigger first.”
“And, Arnold, the captain says—— Oh, my!” broke off Dicky, “what’s this? What have I found?”
The boy stooped to pick up something glittering that had caught his eye. It proved to be a curiously-shaped gold watch-key, with a small compass in it. Mina and Lotty both called out that it was Captain Collinson’s, and must have dropped from his chain during a recent romp with Dicky.
“I’ll take it in to him at Lady Jenkins’s,” said Dicky.