“So I have heard. The brave, noble men,” said Lilly, speaking to Mrs McTougall, but looking at me.
I know not what we conversed about during the remainder of that hour. Whether I talked sense or nonsense I cannot tell. The only thing I am quite sure of is that I talked incessantly, enthusiastically, to Mrs McTougall, but kept my eyes fixed on Lilly Blythe all the time; and I know that Lilly blushed a good deal, and bent her pretty head frequently over her “darling Pompey,” and fondled him to his heart’s content.
That night my leg violently resented the treatment it had received. When I slept I dreamed that I was on the rack, and that Miss Blythe, strange to say, was the chief tormentor, while Dumps quietly looked on and laughed—yes, deliberately laughed—at my sufferings.
Chapter Nine.
On the Scent, but Puzzled.
It was a considerable time after the fire before my leg permitted me to resume my studies and my duties among the poor. Meanwhile I had become a regularly-established inmate of Mr Dobson’s house, and was half-jocularly styled “Dr McTougall’s assistant.”
I confess that I had some hesitation at first in accepting such generous hospitality, but, feeling that I could not help myself till my leg should recover, I became reconciled to it. Then, as time advanced, the doctor—who was an experimental chemist, as well as a Jack-of-all-trades—found me so useful to him in his laboratory, that I felt I was really earning my board and lodging. Meanwhile Lilly Blythe had been sent to visit an aunt of Dr McTougall’s in Kent for the benefit of her health.
This was well. I felt it to be so. I knew that her presence would have a disturbing influence on my studies, which were by that time nearly completed. I felt, also, that it was madness in me to fall in love with a girl whom I could not hope to marry for years, even if she were willing to have me at all, which I very much doubted.