CHAPTER THE TWELFTH.

STOLEN WATERS ARE SWEET.

I was neither in good spirits nor in good temper during the next few days.  My mother and Julia appeared astonished at this, for I was not ordinarily as touchy and fractious as I showed myself immediately after my sojourn in Sark.

I was ashamed of it myself.  The new house, which occupied their time and thoughts so agreeably, worried me as it had not done before.  I made every possible excuse not to be sent to it, or taken to it, several times a day.

The discussions over Julia’s wedding-dress also, which had by no means been decided upon on Saturday afternoon, began to bore me beyond words.  Whenever I could, I made my patients a pretext for getting away from them.

One of them, a cousin of my mother—­as I have said, we were all cousins of one degree or another—­Captain Carey, met me on the quay, a day or two after my return.  He had been a commander in the Royal Navy, and, after cruising about in all manner of unhealthy latitudes, had returned to his native island for the recovery of his health.  He and his sister lived together in a very pleasant house of their own, in the Vale, about two miles from St. Peter-Port.

He looked yellow enough to be on the verge of an attack of jaundice when he came across me.

“Hallo, Martin!” he cried, “I am delighted to see you, my boy.  I’ve been a little out of sorts lately; but I would not let Johanna send for your father.  He does very well to go dawdling after women, and playing with their pulses, but I don’t want him dawdling after me.  Tell me what you have to say about me, my lad.”

He went on to tell me his symptoms, while a sudden idea struck me almost like a flash of genius.

I am nothing of a genius; but at that time new thoughts came into my mind with wonderful rapidity.  It was positively necessary that I should run over to Sark this week—­I had given my word to Miss Ollivier that I would do so—­but I dared not mention such a project at home.  My mother and Julia would be up in arms at the first syllable I uttered.

What if I could do two patients good at one stroke, kill two birds with one stone?  Captain Carey had a pretty little yacht lying idle in St. Sampson’s Harbor, and a day’s cruising would do him all the good in the world.  Why should he not carry me over to Sark, when I could visit my other patient, and nobody be made miserable by the trip?

“I will make you up some of your old medicine,” I said, “but I strongly recommend you to have a day out on the water; seven or eight hours at any rate.  If the weather keeps as fine as it is now, it will do you a world of good.”

“It is so dreary alone,” he objected, “and Johanna would not care to go out at this season, I know.”

“If I could manage it,” I said, deliberating, “I should be glad to have a day with you.”