England -- Fiction; Love stories; Male friendship -- Fiction; Quakers -- Fiction; Social classes -- Fiction
To Marion Fay, 17, Paradise Row, Holloway.
It was not I who was hurt. Shall be at No. 17 by three on
Monday.
"I wonder whether they heard it down at Trafford," said Lady Amaldina
to Lady Frances. On this subject they were informed before the day
was over, as a long message came from Mr. Roberts in compliance
with the instructions from the Marquis. "Because if they did what a
terrible disappointment my aunt will have to bear."
"Do not say anything so horrible," said Lady Frances.
"I always look upon Aunt Clara as though she were not quite in her
right senses about her own children. She thinks a great injury is
done her because her son is not the heir. Now for a moment she will
have believed that it was so." This, however, was a view of the
matter which Lady Frances found herself unable to discuss.
"He's going to get well after all," said Hautboy that evening, just
before dinner. He had been running over to the inn every hour to ask
after the condition of poor Walker. At first the tidings had been
gloomy enough. The doctor had only been able to say that he needn't
die because of his broken bones. Then late in the afternoon there
arrived a surgeon from London who gave something of a stronger hope.
The young man's consciousness had come back to him, and he had
expressed an appreciation for brandy and water. It was this fact
which had seemed so promising to young Lord Hautboy. On the Saturday
there came Mrs. Walker and Miss Walker, and before the Sunday evening
it was told how the patient had signified his intention of hunting
again on the first possible opportunity. "I always knew he was a
brick," said Hautboy, as he repeated the story, "because he always
would ride at everything."
"I don't think he'll ever ride again at the fence just out of
Gimberley Wood," said Lord Hampstead. They were all able to start on
the Monday morning without serious concern, as the accounts from the
injured man's bed-room were still satisfactory. That he had broken
three ribs, a collar-bone, and an arm seemed to be accounted as
nothing. Nor was there much made of the scalp wound on his head,
which had come from a kick the horse gave him in the struggle. As his
brains were still there, that did not much matter. His cheek had been
cut open by a stake on which he fell, but the scar, it was thought,
would only add to his glories. It was the pressure of the horse which
had fallen across his body which the doctors feared. But Hautboy very
rightly argued that there couldn't be much danger, seeing that he had
recovered his taste for brandy and water. "If it wasn't for that,"
said Hautboy, "I don't think I'd have gone away and left him."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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