On reaching the station where she had to disembark she flew to the villa. From a distance she could see—the blinds were drawn down; but then it was evening, and a lamp was alight within—was it where he was laid out in his bones?
She burst in at the door, bathed in a dew of anguish as well as heat, rushed into the sitting-room, and found there Mr. Birdwood in an arm-chair by the fire, his foot up, reading a catalogue of horticultural structures.
“Well, my dear,” said he, “back again?”
“And you—you have been scalded?”
“Yes; my foot.”
“How?”
“Jemima said she couldn’t make a Christmas plum-pudding, and I said we must have one, so I tried my hand.”
“But the flesh—has it left the bone in collops?”
“No; I am blistered, that is all. I spilt the mess over my foot. It was not quite on the boil, I believe.”