"This morning."
"How did it happen?"
Eustace hesitated.
"I was jumping."
"Jumping! But—oh!" Mrs. Hignett's sentence trailed off into a suppressed shriek, as the door opened.
Immediately following on Eustace's accident, Jane Hubbard had constituted herself his nurse. It was she who had bound up his injured ankle in a manner which the doctor on his arrival had admitted himself unable to improve upon. She had sat with him through the long afternoon. And now, fearing lest a return of the pain might render him sleepless, she had come to bring him a selection of books to see him through the night.
Jane Hubbard was a girl who by nature and training was well adapted to bear shocks. She accepted the advent of Mrs. Hignett without visible astonishment, though inwardly she was wondering who the visitor might be.
"Good evening," she said, placidly.
Mrs. Hignett, having rallied from her moment of weakness, glared at the new arrival dumbly. She could not place Jane. She had the air of a nurse, and yet she wore no uniform.
"Who are you?" she asked stiffly.