Strong hands bore Dan to the car and he found himself sitting in a corner of the tonneau on the softest leather cushions he had ever felt. Then the boy was put in beside him and Mr. Pennimore sat beyond. The boy seemed half-dazed and looked at Dan as though he wondered who he was and what he was doing there. Dan felt rather weak and funny, but for all that he watched the two grooms crowd into the front seat with the chauffeur and watched the latter as he pushed a lever slowly forward and turned the big brass wheel. It was Dan’s first ride in an automobile and he felt that it was something of an event; he wished that he felt in better condition to enjoy it and wished that it was going to be longer. Mr. Pennimore was very silent as they went slowly across the grass, dropped with a lurch into the curving road and then whizzed toward the big stone house. That ride was over all too soon for Dan. Almost before he knew it he was lying on a wonderful brass bed in a room that was all pink roses, and a doctor, who had suddenly and marvelously appeared from nowhere, was unceremoniously taking his clothes off of him and feeling his pulse all at the same time.
“There’s nothing the matter with me, sir,” said Dan, but his voice didn’t sound just right to him, and he decided he’d shut up for awhile.
“Supposing you let me find that out for myself,” answered the doctor cheerfully. Well, that sounded sensible, and so Dan laid still and let the doctor do whatever he pleased. It seemed to please the doctor to bandage his left arm and his leg just above the ankle, to look very attentively at his eyes and finally to make him swallow two spoonfuls of something that tasted the way liniment smelled. Dan wondered amusedly whether the doctor was making a mistake and dosing him with what ought to go outside.
“That will do for you,” said the doctor presently, drawing the clothes up under Dan’s chin. “You go to sleep for awhile and when you wake up you’ll feel as fine as ever. Better let fires alone for awhile, though. They’re rather dangerous.”
He nodded and left the room, closing the door softly behind him. Dan lay for awhile and looked at the roses. The house was very quiet. The flutter of a shade at an open window and the faint break of the waves on the beach were the only sounds that reached him. Then his thoughts went back to the afternoon’s adventure and he wondered how the Pennimore boy was. Then he wondered how Jack was. Then he wondered whether they had saved the fire extinguishers. He hoped so for he wanted to see how they worked. Then telling himself that the stuff the doctor had put on his arm and leg certainly did smart, he dropped quietly to sleep.
[CHAPTER XII]
AT SOUND VIEW
When Dan woke up he found that it was supper time. The room was lighted softly and a man—Dan concluded that he was the butler, and having never seen a butler before examined him with disconcerting intentness—was placing a tray on a stand beside the bed. Dan had a very healthy appetite, he found when he had got the sleep out of his head, and was a little disappointed to discover that the repast was quite spartan in its simplicity. There was a good deal of gleaming white napery and much silver and many dishes, but when it came right down to brass tacks, as Dan’s father would have said, there was only hot bouillon, a soup-stick, some graham bread cut into wafer-like slices and buttered, two slices of cold chicken, a “dab” of white current jelly and a saucer of some sort of cornstarchy stuff that did more than aught else had done to impress upon Dan the fact that he was supposed to be an invalid. He had vivid recollections of that sort of pudding. It was inextricably mixed in his memory with mumps and scarlet fever.
“Shall I lift you up, sir?” asked the servant.