My Friend Smith Part 63

It may have been minutes or it may have been hours before I next came to myself, and then my arm lay bandaged by my side, and the sharpness of the pain had gone.

"Fred, old man," was the first thing I heard as I opened my eyes. I knew the voice now, and the face with its two great eyes which bent over me.

I had found my friend at last!

"Hush, don't talk now," he said, as I tried to speak; "lie quiet now, there's a dear fellow."

"Jack!" I said. I could not resist uttering his name, his old familiar long-lost name.

"Yes, it's Jack," he whispered, "but don't talk now."

"You forgive me, Jack?" I murmured, heedless of his injunction.

"Yes, a hundred times!" he said, brus.h.i.+ng back the hair from my forehead, and putting his finger to my lips.

Then I obeyed him, and lay silent and happy all day. Happier with all my pain than I had been for months.

The doctor came later on and looked at my arm.

"He'll do now, I think," said he, "but he will very likely be feverish after it. You should have him taken to the hospital."

"Oh no," cried Jack. "He must stay here, please. I can look after him quite well."

"If it was only the arm," said the doctor. "But he's had a bad fall and is a good deal bruised and shaken besides. He would get better attention, I think, at the hospital."

"I would so much sooner he stayed here," said Jack; "but if he'd really be better at the hospital, I suppose I ought to let him go."

"I won't go to the hospital!" exclaimed I, making the longest speech I had yet made since my accident, with a vehemence that positively startled the two speakers.

This protest settled the question. If only a sick person threatens to get excited about anything, he is pretty sure to have his own way. And so it proved in my case.

"But will you be able to stay at home all day from business to look after him?" asked the doctor.

"No, I'm afraid not," said Jack, "but I think I know some one who will.

He sha'n't be left alone, and I can always just run home in the dinner- hour to see how he's getting on."

The doctor left, only half satisfied with this arrangement, and repeating that it would have been far better to move me to the hospital.

When he was gone Jack came and smoothed my pillow. "I am glad you're to stay," he said. "Now, for fear you should begin to talk, I'm going out to Billy to get my boots blacked. So good-bye for a bit, old boy."

"But, Jack--" I began, trying to keep him.

"Not a word now," said he, going to the door. "Presently."

I was too contented and comfortable to fret myself about anything, still more to puzzle my brains about what I couldn't understand. So I lay still thinking of nothing, and knowing nothing except that I had found my friend once more, and that he was more to me than ever.

Nothing makes one so sleepy as thinking of nothing at all; and long before Jack returned from his visit to Billy I was asleep, and slept soundly all through the night.

Next morning I woke invigorated in body and mind. Jack was up and about before I opened my eyes. He was at my side in a moment as I moved.

"Well, you have had a sleep," he said, cheerily. "I have," replied I.

"But, Jack, where am I?"

"Oh, this is my lodgings," said he. "I'm pretty comfortable here."

I looked round the room. It was a poor, bare apartment, with only two beds, a chair, a small table, and a washstand to furnish it. The table was covered with papers and books.

"You've got a sitting-room too, I suppose?" I said, after taking the room in.

He laughed.

"I find this quite as good a room to sit in as to lie in," said he, "for the matter of that. But I have got the use of another room belonging to a fellow-lodger. He's a literary man, and writes for the papers; but in his spare moments he coaches me in Latin and Greek, in consideration of which I give him half my room to sleep in."

"Whatever's he to do now when I'm here?" I asked.

"Oh, he's going to have a shake-down in his own room. You'll like him, Fred; he's a very good-natured, clever man."

"How old?" I asked.

"About fifty, I should think. And I fancy he's seen a good deal of trouble in his time, though I don't like to ask him."

"I say, Jack," I began in an embarra.s.sed manner, "ever since that time--"

"Shut up, now," said Jack, briskly. "The doctor says unless you obey me in everything you're to go straight to the hospital. And one of my rules is, you're to talk about nothing I don't approve of."

"I was only going to say--"

"There you go. I don't approve of what you were going to say. I suppose you'll be interested to hear I reported your case to the firm yesterday, and they were very sorry to hear of it, and told me there were other fellows in the office they could have spared better. There's a compliment!"

"Was Hawkesbury at the office?" I asked.

Jack's face clouded for a moment.

"Yes, Hawkesbury was there."

"You know he was with me when the accident happened?" I said, by way of explanation.

"Oh," said Jack. "Hullo! here comes Billy. I hope, you won't be horrified to have him to look after you while I'm at the office. He's the only person I could think of."

"Billy and I are very good friends," I said, somewhat taken aback, however, by the prospect of being consigned to that young gentleman's charge for several hours every day.

"Here you are, Billy," said Jack, as the boy entered. "You needn't have brought your blacking-box with you, though."

"What, ain't none of the blokes here got no boots, then?" remarked the youth, depositing his burden.

"The bloke, as you call him, who lies there," said Jack, pointing to me, "won't be putting on his boots for a good many days yet."

Billy approached my bed with his most profuse grin.