“Nonsense!” I ejaculated. “I’m not going to allow you to fling away such a good offer to remain with me. No, you must go, Dick. You’ll be back in three months at most, won’t you?”
“Perhaps before,” and his voice sounded low and strange. “But really, old fellow, I can’t go and leave you helpless, like this.”
“You’ll go,” I said decisively. “Mrs Parker will look after me, and three months will soon pass.”
“No,” he said. “It’s all very well, but you can’t sit here month after month, helpless as you are. It’s impossible.”
“I shall amuse myself with my books and my basket-making,” I answered. Truth to tell, this announcement of his had utterly crushed me. His society was the only bright spot in my life. If he left me I should be entirely alone, cheerless and melancholy. Nevertheless, when the sight is destroyed the mind is quickened, and I reflected all that this offer meant to him, and admired his self-denial and readiness to refuse it on my account.
Therefore I insisted that he should go. In the end he was persuaded, and three days later left Charing Cross for India.
When he had gone I became hopelessly depressed. In vain did I try to interest myself in the embossed books, but they were mostly works which I had read long ago, and in vain I toiled at basket-making until my finger-tips were sore and aching. Sometimes at evening Mrs Parker, herself a sad scholar, would try and read a few of what she considered the choicest morsels of the “extra special.” She read very slowly and inaccurately, poor old soul, and many were the words she was compelled to spell and leave me to solve their meaning. Indeed, in those long hours I spent by myself I sank lower and lower in dejection. No longer I heard Dick’s merry voice saying—
“Come, cheer up, old chap. Let me tell you all I heard to-day over at the club.”
No longer could I lean upon his arm as we descended that steep flight of steps leading from the end of Essex Street to the Embankment; no longer did I hear those playful words of his on such occasions—
“Take care, darling, or you’ll fall.”