“All very well, you old humbug, but you know you are, aren’t you?”
“Your cousin is very good and kind, and no one could help liking her. Everybody is ‘dead on her,’ as you call it, even Walker.”
Percy enjoyed this, and allowed himself to be led off the dangerous topic. He was allowed to sit up for the first time this day, and held a small levée in his room.
Jeffreys took the opportunity to escape for a short time to the library, which he had scarcely been in since the day on the mountain.
He knew Mrs Rimbolt would enjoy her visit to the sick-chamber better without him, and he decidedly preferred his beloved books to her majestic society.
Percy, however, was by no means satisfied with the arrangement.
“Where’s old Jeff?” said he presently, when his mother, Raby, and he were left alone. “Raby, go and tell Jeff, there’s a brick. You can bet he’s in the library. Tell him if he means to cut me dead, he might break it gently.”
“Raby,” said Mrs Rimbolt, as her niece, with a smile, started on his majesty’s errand, “I do not choose for you to go looking about for Mr Jeffreys. There is a bell in the room, and Walker can do it if required. It is unseemly in a young lady.”
“One would think old Jeff was a wild beast or a nigger by the way you talk,” said Percy complainingly. “All I know is, if it hadn’t been for him, you’d all have been in deep mourning now, instead of having tea up here with me.”
“It is quite possible, Percy,” said his mother, “for a person—”