CHAPTER IV.

A DOUBTFUL BLESSING—­A FAMILY FAILING—­OLD BATTLES—­THE
CANAL-CARRIER’S HOME.

When we found that Rupert’s leg was not broken, and that it was only a severe blow on his knee, we were all delighted.  But when weeks and months went by and he was still lame and very pale and always tired, we began to count for how long past, if the leg had been broken, it would have been set, and poor Rupert quite well.  And when Johnny Bustard said that legs and arms were often stronger after being broken than before (if they were properly set, as his father could do them), we felt that if Gregory would bowl for people’s shins he had better break them at once, and let Mr. Bustard make a good job of them.

The first part of the time Rupert made light of his accident, and wanted to go back to school, and was very irritable and impatient.  But as the year went on he left off talking about its being all nonsense, and though he suffered a great deal he never complained.  I used quite to miss his lecturing me, but he did not even squabble with Henrietta now.

This reminds me of a great fault of mine—­I am afraid it was a family failing, though it is a very mean one—­I was jealous.  If I was “particular friends” with any one, I liked to have him all to myself; when Rupert was “out” with me because of the Weston affair, I was “particular friends” with Henrietta.  I did not exactly give her up when Rupert and I were all right again, but when she complained one day (I think she was jealous too!) I said, “I’m particular friends with you as a sister still; but you know Rupert and I are both boys.”

I did love Rupert very dearly, and I would have given up anything and everything to serve him and wait upon him now that he was laid up; but I would rather have had him all to myself, whereas Henrietta was now his particular friend.  It is because I know how meanly I felt about it that I should like to say how good she was.  My Mother was very delicate, and she had a horror of accidents; but Henrietta stood at Mr. Bustard’s elbow all the time he was examining Rupert’s knee, and after that she always did the fomentations and things.  At first Rupert said she hurt him, and would have Nurse to do it; but Nurse hurt him so much more, that then he would not let anybody but Henrietta touch it.  And he never called her Monkey now, and I could see how she tried to please him.  One day she came down to breakfast with her hair all done up in the way that was in fashion then, like a grown-up young lady, and I think Rupert was pleased, though she looked rather funny and very red.  And so Henrietta nursed him altogether, and used to read battles to him as he lay on the sofa, and Rupert made plans of the battles on cardboard, and moved bits of pith out of the elder-tree about for the troops, and showed Henrietta how if he had had the moving of them really, and had done it quite differently to the way the generals did, the other side would have won instead of being beaten.