Certain it was that my thinned blood was growing gradually warmer, and its currents flowed with slightly increasing vigour day by day. The fever, which had come only partly from my wounds, had doubtless been long in me, and had fermented my blood as the opportunity offered when Wraxall nigh drained my every vein with his butcher's blade.
The emaciation of my body was extreme, my limbs were pithless reeds, my skull grinned through the tensely stretched skin, and my eyes were enormous.
Yet, such sturdy fibre have I inherited from my soldier father that grief itself could not retard the mending of me, and in the little French mirror I could almost see my sunken muscles harden and grow slowly fuller. Like a pear in a hot-frame, I was plump long before my strength could aid me or my shocked senses gather to take counsel for the future.
The dreadful anguish of my bereavement came only at intervals, succeeded by an apathy which served as a merciful relief. But most I thought of Silver Heels, and why she had left me here, and when she might return. Keen fear lurked near to stab me when, rousing from blank slumber, my first thought was of her. Then I would lie and wonder why she had gone, and tell myself I loved her above all else, or whimper and deem her cruel to leave me.
One late afternoon the doctor came with a dish of China oranges, which I found relief in sucking, my gums being as yet somewhat hot and painful. He made a hole in an orange and I sucked it awhile, watching him meditatively. He wore crape on his arm—the arm that Quider had broken, and which now he could not bend as formerly.
"Why does not my Aunt Molly come to see me?" I asked, quietly.
"Dear lad," said the doctor, raising his eyebrows, "did you not know she had gone to Montreal?"
"How should I know it," I asked, "when you tell me nothing?"
"I will tell you what I am permitted," he answered, gently.
"Then tell me when my cousin Felicity is coming back? Have you not heard from Sir John Johnson?"