“Mean it, my dear boy?--of course I mean it. Do you suppose I’ve wasted precious hours coming down into the wilds of Willstead to say things I don’t mean? I wanted you before and I want you more than ever now. Those miserable devils didn’t chop off any of your brain, did they? Well, it’s your good, sound, searching brain I want. We’ll find hands for you all right. There is no lack of hands in the world, but brains are sadly lacking, I’m sorry to say, and what there are are not all what they might be.” He had talked on, like the perfect gentleman he was, to give Con time to recover himself. And now Con looked at him with shining eyes,--eyes in which the light of a new great hope in life shone mistily through the excitation of his feelings, like stars shining up out of the sea,--and he said, “You make a new man of me, Sir James.... I feared ... and now----” and Sir James, being a Scotchman himself, understood better than all the words in the world could have told him. “Now I want a cup of tea,” said the great man jauntily, “and if the two Mrs Dares are available it would be a pleasure to me to make their acquaintance.” Con, without moving, touched a button under the carpet with his foot and Robert Grant, who had fixed it up for him only that morning, came in. “This is my good friend, Robert Grant, Sir James,” and the old man and the young one, in acknowledging the introduction, glanced keenly at one another for a moment and appeared mutually satisfied. “Would you beg my mother to join us, Robert, and tell them to send in tea at once. And then if you’d slip across and ask my wife to come over for a few minutes I’d be much obliged.” “Who’s he?” asked Sir James, as Grant vanished. “He saved my life out there and has been everything to me these last five months. He’s a medical, and the best fellow alive. He’s consented to be my hands.” “Good! I like the looks of him.” “He’s better even than he looks and his brain is quite all right. He’s one of the exceptions. We’ve drawn very close together these months out there. He’s consented to stop with me, but he’s got ambitions of his own----” “Of course,--being a Scotchman.” “And I’m hoping that he won’t really be sacrificing himself entirely by devoting himself to me. We did a certain amount of study out there and he’s getting quite keen on the brain.” “We’ll find him his place all right. Keen men are none too plentiful--especially on the brain.” Mrs Dare came in, and Alma a few minutes after her, and when they had been made to understand the wonderful news, while Sir James drank his tea, they were almost as much overcome as Con himself had been.