“It will make your Christmas so sad for you,” he said.

“Oh, as for that, we mind nothing about it—­for ourselves.  We are never very gay here.”

“But you are happy?”

“Oh yes, quite happy, except when Harry is disturbed by these troubles.  I don’t think any body has so many troubles as a squatter.  It sometimes seems that all the world is against him.”

“We shall be allies now, at any rate.”

“Oh, I do so hope we shall,” said Kate, putting her hands together in her energy, and then retreating from her energy with sad awkwardness when she remembered the personal application of her wish.  “That is, I mean you and Harry,” she added, in a whisper.

“Why not I and others besides Harry?”

“It is so much to him to have a real friend.  Things concern us, of course, only just as they concern him.  Women are never of very much account, I think.  Harry has to do every thing, and every thing ought to be done for him.”

“I think you spoil Harry among you.”

“Don’t you say so to Mary, or she will be fierce.”

“I wonder whether I shall ever have a wife to stand up for me in that way?”

Kate had no answer to make, but she thought that it would be his own fault if he did not have a wife to stand up for him thoroughly.

“He has been very lucky in his wife.”

“I think he has, Mr. Medlicot; but you are moving about, and you ought to lie still.  There!  I hear the horses; that’s the doctor.  I do so hope he won’t say that any thing very bad is the matter.”

She jumped up from her chair, which was close to his bed, and as she did so just touched his hand with hers.  It was involuntary on her part, having come of instinct rather than will, and she withdrew herself instantly.  The hand she had touched belonged to the arm that was not hurt, and he put it out after her, and caught her by the sleeve as she was retreating.  “Oh, Mr. Medlicot, you must not do that; you will hurt yourself if you move in that way.”

And so she escaped, and left the room, and did not see him again till the doctor had gone from Gangoil.

The bone had been broken simply as other bones are broken; it was now set, and the sufferer was, of course, told that he must rest.  He had suggested that he should be taken home, and the Heathcotes had concurred with the doctor in asserting that no proposition could be more absurd.  He had intended to eat his Christmas dinner at Gangoil, and he must now pass his entire Christmas there.

“The sugar can go on very well for ten days,” Harry had said.  “I’ll go over myself and see about the men, and I’ll fetch your mother over.”

To this, however, Mrs. Heathcote had demurred successfully.  “You’ll kill yourself, Harry, if you go on like this,” she said.

Bender, therefore, was sent in the buggy for the old lady, and at last Harry Heathcote consented to go to bed.