“‘Did it hurt very badly?’
“‘N—not so very much.’
“‘I should have thought that you ought to have been in bed,’ say I, with a motherly air of solicitude.
“‘Should you, why?’
“‘I thought that when people broke their limbs they had to stay in bed till they were mended again.’
“‘But mine was broken a week ago,’ he answers, smiling and showing his straight white teeth—ah, the miniature was silent about them! ‘You would not have had me stay in bed a whole week like an old woman?’
“‘I expected to have seen you much iller,’ say I, beginning to feel more at my ease, and with a sensible diminution of that unpleasant swelling sensation. ‘Father said in his note that we were to nurse you well again; that sounded as if you were quite ill.’
“‘Your father always takes a great deal too much care of me,’ he says, with a slight frown and darkening of his whole bright face. ‘I might be sugar or salt.’
“‘And very kind of him, too,’ I cry, firing up. ‘What motive beside your own good can he have for looking after you? I call you rather ungrateful.’
“‘Do you?’ he says calmly, and without apparent resentment. ‘But you are mistaken. I am not ungrateful. However, naturally, you do not understand.’