"Jasper, can I come in?"
They had been children together, but no such thing as false modesty would have kept Rose Benham out of her cousin's room. She entered breezily, without a fleck of colour on her cheeks, her blue eyes full of a frank, intimate interest. Three years older than Jasper, she still treated him as a boy.
"This is a nice affair! Getting shot when you are wanted to drill your volunteers on the green of a Sunday. Not that I can call them anything but a lot of waddling ducks. And you have had old Blister Doddington, have you? I hope he was sober. And you are sure he has set your arm properly?"
Her pale-blue eyes and her reddish hair seemed to tone with her brisk self-confidence. Rose Benham knew what she expected of life, and she meant life to satisfy her expectations. Whisking a rush-bottomed chair from a corner, she sat down beside the bed, talking the whole time. She was one of those women who overwhelm the world with words.
"Well, what an adventure! And how does it feel to be picked up out of the road by a young woman? Yes, I have heard all about it."
She laughed her quick, harsh laugh.
"Don't look at me as if such things happened every day! You men, you take everything for granted. And here am I dying to hear all about it. Cousin Rose has a right to know, hasn't she?"
There was a subtle suggestion of ownership in the way she put out a hand and smoothed the pillow. Jasper was not wholly the boy cousin to her. He was the man she had determined to marry.
Jasper looked bothered. Rose had such a way of driving people into a corner.
"There is nothing to tell. One of the rogues waited for me in the dark, and shot me in Stonehanger Lane. They just helped me into the house, and I spent the night there. Jack fetched me in the wagon yesterday morning."