A telephone interrupted the reverie of Lady Frances. Five minutes later, pale and anxious, but not forgetting the practicality that had been her lifetime's habit, Lady Frances Ware was in her son's rooms across the hall, turning down the bed for the reception of Sir William who, knocked down by a motor dray as he was piloting the half-drunken Nixon across a crowded street downtown was being brought home in the ambulance.
Nixon, reaching the hotel bar that afternoon, had discovered an unforeseen weakness for what he termed "beer"—a word that with him, meant everything drinkable in the alcoholic line—and had, in spite of Ware's remonstrances, continued to imbibe beyond all reasonable limits: dragging Sir William, who felt responsible and could not well abandon him, to a big bar in the central portion of the city, and even paying for his own drinks after Ware had flatly refused to take the risk of buying any more for him.
"You are rather a thirsty chap, you know," Ware, who had himself taken only the original proposed glass of refreshment, had remarked, as at last he had managed to get Nixon's wobbling head faced toward home. It was while the two were in the act of crossing a street to a taxi Ware had hailed, that the motor dray had run the baronet down. With a last half-spasmodic push, he had thrust Nixon out of harm's way, and the latter had not received so much as a scratch.
CHAPTER XX. John Nixon's Invitation.
"Well," said Sir William, a little feebly to Daisy, who sat on a stool beside his chair, with her head resting on the cushioned arm in such a position that Ware could stroke her hair with his "good" hand, "this has jolly well taught me to look about, on street-crossings. I suppose I am what the tram people would call a 'jay walker'. I say, Puss—aren't you sorry you married such a silly ass. Be frank, now! Say I'm a blundering idiot."
"No, you're not," said Daisy; "how's your arm feeling?"
"Tip-top," Ware, as he replied offhand about the broken limb, regarded the girl with a bright and tender approval.
"And your head?" continued Daisy, "does it ache much, there where the bruise is? Let me get some fresh ice."