“You’re a nice fellow, Batchelor,” said he, laughing, “telling me it was smallpox! You gave me such a fright. I told all the fellows, and at your office, and you should have seen how blue they all looked. What a sell it will be when you turn up all serene.” This was pleasant.
“You’d better not be too sure,” I said, still clinging to my ailment. “It may be it after all. The doctor said I was to go to bed early to-night and keep quite quiet. I’d advise you not to stay in the room, Larkins.”
“Oh, all right, good-night,” said Larkins, going to the door.
I heard him whistling merrily down the stairs, and felt still more uncomfortable. However, merciful sleep ended my troubles for a season. I slept like a top all that night, and woke next morning as fresh and well as I had ever been in all my life. The only thing wrong with me was the colour of my face. That was certainly rather brilliant. I had to endure a regular broadside of quizzing from my fellow-lodgers that morning at breakfast, which certainly did not tend to cheer me up in the prospect of presenting myself shortly at Hawk Street. I would fain have been spared that ceremony!
There arrived, as I was starting out, a hurried line from Mrs Shield, announcing that Jack was “much the same,” which of course meant he was still very ill.
Poor Jack! I had been so taken up with my own fancied ailment that I had scarcely thought of him. As it was I could hardly realise that he was so very ill.
Little had we imagined that evening when he caught up the half-murdered urchin in his arms and carried him to our lodgings what the result of that act would be to one of us! And yet, if it were to do again, I fancied my friend Smith would do it again, whatever it cost. But to think of his being so ill, possibly losing his life, all for a graceless young vagabond who—
“Clean ’e boots, do y’ hear, clean ’e boots, sir?”
Looking towards the sound, I saw the very object of my thoughts in front of me. He was clad in a tattered old tail coat, and trousers twice the size of his little legs. His head and feet were bare, and there seemed little enough semblance of a shirt. Altogether it was the most “scarecrowy” apparition I ever came across.
“Shine ’e boots, master?” he cried, flourishing a blacking-brush in either hand, and standing across my path.