“Nothing to signify, now it has been bandaged, thank you.  I shall soon be all right.  Did she make you understand her wonderful courage and resolution in holding up that heavy boy all that time?”

Mrs. Evelyn let John expatiate on her daughter’s heroism till steps were heard approaching, and his aunt knocked at the door.  Perhaps she was the person most tried when she looked into his bright, dark eyes, and understood the thrill in his voice as he told of Sydney’s bravery and resolution.  She guessed what emotion gave sweetness to his thankfulness, and feared if he did not yet understand it he soon would, and then what pain would be in store for one or other of the cousins.  When Mrs. Evelyn asked him if he had really sent the message that his fractured ribs were of no consequence, his aunt’s foreboding spirit feared they might prove of only too much consequence; but at least, if he were a supplanter, it would be quite unconsciously.

As Barbara said, when she came up from the diminished dinner-party to spend the evening with her friend—-

“Those delightful things always do happen to other people!”

“It wasn’t very delightful!” said Sydney.

“Not at the time, but you dear old thing, you have really saved a life!  That was always our dream!”

“The boy is not at all like our dream!” said Sydney.  “He is a horrid little fellow.”

“Oh, he will come right now!”

“If you knew the family, you would very much doubt it.”

“Sydney, why will you go on disenchanting me?  I thought the real thing had happened to you at last as a reward for having been truer to our old woman than I.”

“I don’t think you would have thought hanging on that bank much reward,” said Sydney.

“Adventures aren’t nice when they are going on.  It is only ‘meminisse juvat’, you know.  You must have felt like the man in Ruckert’s Apologue, with the dragon below, and the mice gnawing the root above.”

“My dear, that story kept running in my head, and whenever I looked at the river it seemed to be carrying me away, bank, and stump, and all.  I’m afraid it will do so all night.  It did, when some hot wine and water they made me have with my dinner sent me to sleep.  Then I thought of—-

“Time, with its ever rolling stream,
Is bearing them away,”

and I didn’t know which was Time and which was Avon.”

“In your sleep, or by the river?”

“Both, I think!  I seem to have thought of thousands of things, and yet my whole soul was one scream of despairing prayer, though I don’t believe I said anything except to bid the boy hold still, till I heard that welcome shout.”

“Ah, the excellent Monk!  He is the family hero.  I wonder if he enjoys it more than you?  Did he really never let you guess how much he was hurt?”

“I asked him once; but he said it was only a dig in the side, and would go off.”