The Window-Gazer Part 3

"Didn't I tell you I was the secretary? My department is the 'information bureau.' I do not see the actual letters. There are always personal bits which father puts in himself."

"Bits regarding boarding accommodation, etc.?"

She did not answer his smile, and her eyes grew hard as she nodded.

"Usually I can keep things from going that far. I can't quite see how it happened so suddenly in your case."

"I happen to be a sudden person."

"Evidently. Father was quite dumbfounded when he knew you had actually arrived. He certainly expected an interval during which he could invent good and sufficient reasons for putting you off."

"Such as?"

"Such as smallpox. An outbreak of smallpox among the Indians is quite a favorite with father."

"The old--I beg your pardon!"

"Don't bother. You are certainly ent.i.tled to an expression of your feelings. It may be the only satisfaction, you will get. But aren't we getting away from the question?"

"Question?"

"When do you wish Li Ho to take you back to Vancouver?"

Professor Spence opened his lips to say that any time would suit. It was the obvious answer, the only sensible answer, the answer which he fully intended to make. But he did not make it.

"Must I really go?" he asked. He was, so he had said himself, a sudden person.

His hostess met his deprecating gaze with pure surprise.

"You can't possibly want to stay?"

"I quite possibly can. I like it here. And I'm horribly tired."

The hostility which had begun to gather in her eyes lightened a little.

"Tired? I noticed that you limped this morning. Is there anything the matter with you?"

It was certainly an ungracious way of putting it. And her eyes, while not exactly hostile, were ungracious, too. They would make anyone with a spark of pride want to go away at once. The professor told himself this. Besides, his only possible reason for wis.h.i.+ng to stay had been some unformed idea of being helpful to the girl herself--ungrateful minx!

"If there is anything really wrong--" the cold incredulity of her tone was the last straw.

"Nothing wrong at all!" said Professor Spence. He arose briskly. Alas!

He had forgotten his sciatic nerve. He had forgotten, too, the crampiness of its temper since that glacial bath, and, most completely of all, had he forgotten the fate of the man-who-didn't-take-care-of-himself. Therefore it was with something of surprise that he found himself crumpled up upon the floor. Only when he tried to rise again and felt the sweat upon his forehead did he remember the doctor's story.... Spence swore under his breath and attempted to pull himself up by the table.

"Wait a moment!"

The cold voice held authority--the authority he had come to respect in hospital--and he waited, setting his teeth. Next moment he set them still harder, for Li Ho and the girl picked him up without ceremony and laid him, whitefaced, upon the sprawling sofa.

"Why didn't you say you had sciatica?" asked Miss Farr, belligerently.

It seemed unnecessary to answer.

"I know it is sciatica," she went on, "because I've seen it before. And if you had no more sense than to bathe in that pool you deserve all you've got."

"It looked all right."

"Oh--looked! It's melted ice--simply."

"So I realized, afterwards."

"You seem to do most things afterwards. What caused it in the first place, cold?"

"The sciatica? No--an injury."

There was a slight pause.

"Was it--in the war?" The new note in her voice did not escape Spence.

He lied promptly--too promptly. Desire Farr was an observant young person, quite capable of drawing conclusions.

"I'm not going to be sympathetic," she said. "That," with sudden illumination, "is probably what you ran away from. But you'd better be truthfull Was it a bullet?"

"Shrapnel."

"And the treatment?"

"Rest, and the tablets in my bag."

"Right--I'll get them."

It was quite like old hospital times. The sofa was hard and the pillows k.n.o.bby. But he had lain upon worse. Li Ho was not more unhandy than many an orderly. And the tablets, quickly and neatly administered by Miss Farr, brought something of relief.

Not until she saw the strain within his eyes relax did his self-appointed nurse pa.s.s sentence.

"You certainly can't move until you are better," she said. "You'll have to stay. It can't be helped but--father will have a fit."

"A fit?" murmured Spence. Privately he thought that a fit might do the old gentleman good.

"He hates having anyone here," she went on thoughtfully. "It upsets him."

"Does it? But why? I can understand it upsetting you. But he--he doesn't do the work, does he?"

"Not exactly," the girl smiled. "But--oh well, I don't believe in explanations. You'll see things for your-self, perhaps. And now I'll get you a book. I won't warn you not to move for I know you can't."

With a glance which, true to her promise, was not overburdened with sympathy, his strangely acquired hostess went out and closed the door.

He tried to read the book she had handed him ("Green Mansions"--ho-r had it wandered out here?) but his mind could not detach itself. It insisted upon listening for sounds outside. And presently a sound came--the high, thin sound of a voice shaking with weakness or rage.

Then the cool tones of his absent nurse, then the voice again--certainly a most unpleasant voice--and the cras.h.i.+ng sound of something being violently thrown to the ground and stamped upon.

Through the closed door, the professor seemed to see a vision of an absurd old man with pale eyes, who shrieked and stamped upon an umbrella.