Part 20 (1/2)
”I think, my boy, you had better stop down here for the present for both your sakes. I will let you know when you can go up to him.”
So Bill crouched before the fire and waited. He heard movements upstairs and wondered what they were doing and why they didn't keep quiet, and when he would be allowed to go up. Once or twice the nurse came down for hot water, but Bill did not speak to her; but in half an hour Mrs. Andrews herself returned, looking, Bill thought, even paler than before.
”I have just slipped down to tell you, my boy, that it's all over.
They gave him chloroform, and have taken his foot off.”
”And didn't it hurt it awful?” Bill asked in an awed voice.
”Not in the least. He knew nothing about it, and the first thing he asked when he came to was when they were going to begin. They will be going away directly, and then you can come up and sit quietly in his room if you like. The doctors say he will probably drop asleep.”
Bill was obliged to go outside again and wrestle with himself before he felt that he was fit to go up into George's room. It was a long struggle, and had George caught his muttered remonstrances to himself he would have felt that Bill had suffered a bad relapse into his former method of talking. It came out in jerks between his sobs.
”Come, none of that now. Aint yer ashamed of yerself, a-howling and a-blubbering like a gal! Call yerself a man!--you are a babby, that's what you are. Now, dry up, and let's have no more of it.”
But it was a long time before he again mastered himself; then he went to the scullery and held his head under the tap till the water took away his breath, then polished his face till it shone, and then went and sat quietly down till Mrs. Andrews came in and told him that he could go upstairs to George. He went up to the bedside and took George's hand, but he could not trust himself to speak.
”Well, Bill, old boy,” George said cheerily, but in a somewhat lower voice than usual, ”this is a sudden go, isn't it?”
Bill nodded. He was still speechless.
”Don't you take it to heart, Bill,” George said, feeling that the lad was shaking from head to foot. ”It won't make much odds, you know. I shall soon be about again all right. I expect they will be able to put on an artificial foot, and I shall be stumping about as well as ever, though I shouldn't be much good at a race.”
”I wish it had been me,” Bill broke out. ”I would have jammed my head in between them wheels cheerful, that I would, rather than you should have gone and done it.”
”Fortunately there was no time,” George said with a smile. ”Don't you fret yourself, Bill; one can get on well enough without a foot, and it didn't hurt me a bit coming off. No, nor the squeeze either, not regular hurting; it was just a sort of scrunch, and then I didn't feel anything more. Why, I have often hurt myself ten times as much at play and thought nothing of it. I expect it looked much worse to you than it felt to me.”
”We will talk of it another time,” Bill said huskily. ”Your mother said I wasn't to talk, and I wasn't to let you talk, but just to sit down here quiet, and you are to try to go off to sleep.” So saying he sat down by the bedside. George asked one or two more questions, but Bill only shook his head. Presently George closed his eyes, and a short time afterwards his quiet regular breathing showed that he was asleep.
The next six weeks pa.s.sed pleasantly enough to George. Every day hampers containing flowers and various niceties in the way of food were sent down by Mr. Penrose, and that gentleman himself very frequently called in for a chat with him. As soon as the wound had healed an instrument-maker came down from town to measure him for an artificial foot, but before he was able to wear this he could get about on crutches.
The first day that he was downstairs Mr. Penrose brought Nelly down to see him. The child looked pale and awed as he came in.
”My little girl has asked me to thank you for her, George,” Mr.
Penrose said as she advanced timidly and placed her hand in his. ”I have not said much to you about my own feelings and I won't say much about hers; but you can understand what we both feel. Why, my boy, it was a good Providence, indeed, which threw you in my way! I thought so when you saved the mill from destruction. I feel it tenfold more now that you have saved my child. The ways of G.o.d are, indeed, strange.
Who would have thought that all this could have sprung from that boy s.n.a.t.c.hing the locket from Helen as we came out of the theater! And now about the future, George. I owe you a great debt, infinitely greater than I can ever repay; but what I can do I will. In the future I shall regard you as my son, and I hope that you will look to me as to a father. I have been talking to your mother, and she says that she thinks your tastes lie altogether in the direction of engineering. Is that so?”
”Yes, sir. I have often thought I would rather be an engineer than anything else, but I don't like----”
”Never mind what you like and what you don't like,” Mr. Penrose said quietly. ”You belong to me now, you know and must do as you are told.
What I propose is this, that you shall go to a good school for another three years, and I will then apprentice you to a first-cla.s.s engineer, either mechanical or civil as you may then prefer, and when you have learned your business I will take good care that you are pushed on. What do you say to that?”
”I think it is too much altogether,” George said.
”Never mind about that,” Mr. Penrose said, ”that is my business. If that is the only objection we can imagine it settled. There is another thing. I know how attached you are to your friend Bill, and I am indebted to him, too, for the part he played at the fire, so I propose, if he is willing, to put him to a good middle-cla.s.s school for a bit. In the course of a couple of years he will get a sufficient education to get on fairly with, and then I propose, according as you may choose to be a civil or mechanical engineer, to place him with a mason or smith; then by the time that you are ready to start in business he will be ready to take a place under you, so that you may again work together.”
”Oh, thank you, sir!” George exclaimed, even more pleased at the news relating to Bill than at his own good fortune, great as was the delight which the prospect opened by Mr. Penrose's offer caused him.
As soon as George could be moved, Mr. Penrose sent him with his mother and Bill down to the seaside. Here George rapidly regained strength, and when, after a stay there of two months, he returned to town, he was able to walk so well with his artificial foot that his loss would not have been noticed by a stranger.