"Good heavens!" he cried. "What's been happening?"
"Fell down a bank and bumped the old lemon against a tree," said Hugo, with the quiet pride of a man who has had an accident. "I looked in to see if you had got some glue or something to stick it up with."
John, as became one who thought nothing of putting stitches in cows, exhibited a cool efficiency. He bustled about, found water and cotton wool and iodine, and threw in sympathy as a make-weight. Only when the operation was completed did he give way to a natural curiosity.
"How did it happen?"
"Well, it started when I found that bounder Twist burgling the house."
"Twist?"
"Yes. Twist. The Healthward Ho bird."
"You found Doctor Twist burgling the house?"
"Yes, and I made him do bending and stretching exercises. And in the middle he legged it through the window, and Emily and I chivvied him about the garden. Then he disappeared, and I saw him again at the end of that path above the shrubberies, and I dashed after him and took a toss and it wasn't Twist at all, it was Ronnie."
John forbore to ask further questions. This incoherent tale satisfied him that his cousin, if not delirious, was certainly on the borderland. He remembered the whole-heartedness with which Hugo had drowned his sorrows only a short while back in this very room, and he was satisfied that what the other needed was rest.