“Tut, tut, my dear, you just let me speak. You’re not more fit to manage a wife than you are a baby, but it’s never too late to learn; and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll just order the chaise-cart directly breakfast’s over (such a breakfast as it is too! but I’ll warrant, such as it is, they’ll make us pay dear enough for it); and then, stopping for nothing and nobody, we’ll drive back to the Paddocks.” John shook his head at this wise proposal. “You can go back yourself, mother, and I think, too, that you’d better take Honor along with you; but it won’t do for me to be out of the way, even if I could bear myself (which to own the truth I could not) to be out of the way of hearing about the Colonel.” Honor, on hearing John’s proposal, looked at him imploringly over the Britannia-metal teapot. To her also it would be a sore aggravation to leave the place where her father lay between life and death. That his days _were_ endangered, Dr. Kempshall had now openly said. The blow he had received was a very severe one, and there had been considerable injury to the bone, but the immediate cause for apprehension lay in the inflammatory condition of the patient’s blood. The weather was intensely hot, and Colonel Norcott had been indulging, though not to excess, yet a little more freely than was advisable under the circumstances, in the good things provided for the company in the gentlemen’s tent, where Mr. Arthur Vavasour’s health had been drunk with a good deal of enthusiasm by his numerous friends. On the majority, whose heads had _not_ been subsequently broken, the trifling excess had produced no unpleasant consequences. But Colonel Norcott was unfortunately the exception to the rule; his blood had been terribly heated; and inflammation of the brain, and even erysipelas, might too probably be the result of his indiscretion. “Don’t say that I am to go, John, please,” said Honor, the ready tears springing to her eyes, and in a voice that went straight to John’s heart. His mother, however, was inexorable. “Now, Honor, I won’t have you foolish. If John is to stay, which I must own I think a great piece of extravagance and folly, there’s no reason why you should remain, to be a trouble and an expense to him. And, John, the more I think of it, the more I can’t understand what risks you are likely to run in the matter. You were quite alone, you two, you say, and after what Colonel Norcott said--” “Mother,” broke in John a little impatiently, “what _he_ said, poor fellow, has nothing, or next to nothing, to do with it. If the worst comes to the worst,” he added in a lower tone, and very gravely, “I shall be questioned; and then I shall, as a matter of course, tell the whole truth from beginning to end.”