As it was, Oliver did neither. He laughed again, a little constrainedly, for that kick on his shins, though he had been accustomed to be mauled at football, and though this was almost a playful kick administered in the delirious inconstancy of Webster’s mind, had done its work with considerable effect. After his short laugh Oliver began to reflect. ‘I must have hurt the rascal on some tender spot to reduce him to such excess of drink and madness in a couple of days. I gave credit to his pretensions and to Jim Hull’s dogmatic assurance that Webster would find another master sooner than I should another servant. Well, there’s nothing to be done at this time of the day. It is utterly impossible now for him to make submission and agree to my terms, or for me to reinstate him in the bakehouse, but we may be no more than quits, although he should have contrived to crack my ankle-bone. How shall I manage to hop home, though Fan accuses me of a propensity to stand on one leg? And what am I to say to Fan and the world at large? A fall? It was a fall, but a jolly rum fall to produce such consequences.’ Yet Oliver had no further account to give of the accident, whether it were pride or magnanimity, or a mixture of both, which kept him silent. He would not condescend to a more particular explanation, though it was discovered in time that some of the smaller bones of his ankle had been fractured, and that because the injury had not been properly attended to at first—on account of his having choked down his suffering, and slurred over the amount of damage he had received—there followed a protracted and painful imprisonment to the mill-house. And Oliver came out of it, and the accompanying illness, even though he had allowed a pair of learned physicians to be summoned to his aid, limping slightly for life on one ankle—if not on one knee like Horatius Coccles, as the culminating touch to his awkwardness.