Behind the tray came Peggy Falconer, who had been Philip"s hostess now for the best part of three weeks.
She greeted her patient with a maternal smile, and enquired:--
"Slept well?"
"Very well, thank you."
"Leg troublesome?"
"No. It seems to be joining up in first-cla.s.s style now."
"Concussion all gone?"
Philip knuckled his head vigorously all over, to show that his skull was once more free from dents.
"In that case," announced Peggy, "I may possibly let you have some letters to read. But I shall wait until the doctor has seen you."
Philip, who had no desire whatever to receive letters,--nor would have, until Fate separated him again from Miss Peggy Falconer,--thanked his hostess meekly, and proceeded to decapitate an egg.
"Do you feel strong enough to receive a visitor to-day?" continued Peggy.
"Who? Tim?"
"I didn"t mean Tim, though I haven"t the slightest doubt that he will call," said Peggy, with an enigmatic smile. "This is a new visitor--Miss Leslie. She used to be mother"s greatest friend, and--and she has always been very good to me. I should like you to know her."
At this point the conversation was interrupted by a roar from the foot of the stairs.
"That is Dad," explained Peggy, quite needlessly.
Montagu Falconer invariably adopted this method of announcing his readiness for breakfast. A commotion upon the ground floor merely signified to Philip the intelligence that it was about half-past nine, or half-past one, or eight in the evening.
"I am afraid I am keeping you," he said.
"Quite right," a.s.sented Peggy. "You are. Eat up your breakfast like a good little boy, and perhaps I will come and see you again later."
And she sped out of the room and down the stair, to quell a bread-riot.
A woman with two men on her hands is, indeed, a busy person.
Philip munched his breakfast in utter content. He was convalescent now, though the first week or so had been a bad time. He was only intermittently conscious, and his injuries had combined to render sleep a nightmare and wakefulness a throbbing torment. But he would have gone through it all again, and yet again, cheerfully, provided he could have remained in the hands of his present nurse. In the dim and distant past he had recollections of another attendant,--a deft and capable lady in a blue-and-white uniform,--but she had disappeared long ago (friction with the master of the house being the cause), and his whole illness and recovery were summed up to Philip in the single word, Peggy.
For the Big Thing had happened. Philip was in love. His long-expected Lady had come to him at last--or rather, come back to him, after an interval of years--grown up into a slim, elfin, brown-eyed piece of Dresden china. She had gathered him up, crushed and broken, from the middle of a Surrey highway, and had conveyed him straight to her home in Chelsea, to be nursed and mothered back into coherent existence. This, be it noted, in the face of a strongly-worded and most enthusiastic eulogy (from her parent) of the public hospitals of the metropolis.
But Peggy had been quite firm.
"Dad," she said, "I don"t think you quite realise that he has saved your life."
"If he has," said Montagu Falconer magnificently, "he shall be suitably rewarded."
Peggy eyed her progenitor dispa.s.sionately.
"If you are thinking of tipping him half-a-sovereign," she said, "I advise you not to. I happen to know him. Now don"t be a silly old curmudgeon, but go and see if the ambulance is coming."
Montagu obeyed, grumbling. There were only two women of his acquaintance who did not fear him, and Peggy was one. In fact, Peggy feared nothing, except spiders and the revelation of her own feelings.
II
"And how is the _tibia_ of Theophilus this morning?"
Timothy, entering the room like a gust of ozone, sat down heavily by the patient"s bedside and slapped the counterpane heartily.
"Just making both ends meet," replied the owner of the tibia, shrinking nervously towards the wall.
"Good!" said Timothy. "And is it well with the solar plexus?"
"Try again," said Philip.
Timothy paused, thoughtfully.
"I was under the impression that it was the solar plexus," he said in a troubled voice. "I know it was a heavenly body of some kind. Ah, I have it. The semilunar cartilage! How is the semilunar cartilage this morning?"
Philip reported favourably.
"Cavities in the cranium now permanent, I gather?" continued Tim sympathetically. "Prospect of ultimate mental weakness confirmed--what?
Never mind! I"ll get my late boss to provide you with a permanent post under Government."
"My skull," replied the patient mildly, "is all right, except when you make such an infernal noise."
Timothy was contrite at once.
"Noise? Tut-tut! Am I making a noise? This will never do. Nervous and irritable patient--eh? Must be kept quiet. I see. We will get some tanbark down outside. _Street Cries Prohibited!_ and so on. But how are you getting along generally, old thing? How are all your organs? Fairly _crescendo_, I trust."
"Leave my organs alone, curse you!" growled the invalid.
"Certainly," said Timothy soothingly. "Organs _and_ Street Cries Prohibited! We"ll have a notice to that effect pinned up on your bedroom door. It will please Falconer. By the way, how is--er, Miss Falconer, this morning?"
Thereafter the conversation pursued a line far remote from Philip"s health. Needless to say, the impressionable Timothy had fallen an instantaneous victim to Peggy. Striding about the room, absently munching some grapes which he had brought as a present for Philip, Timothy embarked upon a whole-hearted panegyric of his present adored one, heedless of the fact that the same panegyric had been delivered, _mutatis mutandis_, to the same audience by the same rhapsodist many times before.
Philip lay back and listened contentedly--nay, approvingly. He experienced no feeling of jealousy. No man, he considered, could know Peggy Falconer without loving her, so why blame Timothy?
"Have you noticed the neat little way she puts her head on one side, and smiles right up at you, when she wants something done that you don"t want to do?" enquired the infatuated youth.
"What sort of thing?" asked Philip, glad to discuss Peggy in any aspect.
"Oh, going away, and things like that," said Timothy, navely. "And her complexion, and her arms--my word! Have you seen her in evening kit?
Fancy you knowing her when you were kids! I suppose you were great pals?"
"I dare say," admitted the reticent Philip.