“Oh, nothing very much. Don’t bother about it,” was the great specialist’s reply. “You were thrown out of your car, that’s all. No bones broken.”
“Ah! yes,” he replied, slowly raising a hand to his brow. “Ah! yes—now I remember. That wagon—right across the road—and no light upon it! Yes—I—I remember!”
“Don’t bother. That’s enough now. Just go to sleep again, my dear fellow,” said Sir Evered, soothingly, placing his hand upon his patient’s brow. “Don’t try and think. Just rest for the present.”
And thus advised, his lordship closed his eyes wearily, and was soon asleep.
“Excellent,” declared Sir Evered, much gratified when outside the room with the others, leaving Jean alone with the sleeper. “He’ll recover—no doubt he will.”
And five minutes later he was in the library, speaking over the telephone to the Prime Minister at Downing Street, while that same evening the papers gave the welcome news to the world that there was every hope of the Foreign Minister’s restoration to health.
The three medical men had strapped up the injured shoulder and applied various remedies, therefore the patient that night was in no pain, though Sister Gertrude took Jean’s place at ten o’clock and sat by his bedside all night, receiving hourly visits from the doctors.
Bracondale Park was a house of breathless anxiety through the days which followed. Sir Evered, though his presence was required hourly in London—as is the presence of such a great surgeon—remained at the bedside of his friend. They had been at Cambridge together, and ever since their undergraduate days had been intimate chums.
His lordship’s illness proved of longer duration than was at first anticipated. Sir Evered remained at Bracondale a whole week, and then, finding that his patient was progressing favourably, returned to London, leaving the case in the hands of Dr. Wright-Gilson and Dr. Noel Tanner, while Sister Gertrude and Jean did the nursing.
Life at Bracondale Jean found extremely pleasant. The great house, with its luxuriously-furnished rooms, its fine picture-gallery, where, often, in her hours of recreation, she wandered; the big winter-garden with palms and exotic flowers, the conservatories, the huge ballroom—wherein long ago the minuet had been danced by high-born dames in wigs and patches—the fine suites of rooms with gilded cornices—all were, to her, full of interest.