CHAPTER XIX.

WHEN THE WORLD CAME RIGHT AGAIN

"Good man!" said Teddy Raine.

"Great action!" said Bottles.

"Do you think," queried Nugent thoughtfully, "that there's any tendency to string-halt? Bit of a kick about that off leg."

"Do you realise, young man, that you're jesting with my professional reputation!" said Neil Fraser severely.

"Not to mention with my best leg!" put in Dick. He flung a cushion with a quick movement that found Nugent unprepared. It took him in the face, and he subsided on top of Teddy, who received him without any gratification.

"Get off, young Nuge!" he said, hurling him away. "Trot up and down again, Lester; I want to see."

"Not if I know it," said Dick, lowering himself gently on a couch. "When you haven't used your legs for about seven ages they don't make exercise exactly a joke. And that's my third walk to-day. Trot Bottles up and down; he needs it."

"Don't you; the balcony won't stand it," grinned Nugent. "There's a notice somewhere that nothing over ten tons is allowed to trot on this floor!"

"Don't listen to them, Bottles," said Mrs. Lester, laughing. "These skinny people are always jealous of good, honest weight!"

"Bless 'em, I don't mind," Bottles answered cheerfully. "Keeps 'em happy and good, and then they're no trouble, the pretty dears!" He grinned in a fatherly way at Dick and Nugent.

"When I can put on the pace a bit," said Dick with emphasis, "I'll teach you to call me a pretty dear! Pound him to-night in the dormer for me, Nuge, will you? He's got horribly above himself since I've been away."

They were all on the hospital balcony, where, on a table, were the remains of afternoon tea. Mrs. Lester sat near Dick's couch--he still liked to feel that she was within reach of his hand. On a cushion beside her chair Merle was curled up; she held jealously to her position as "Legs," and looked forward with some dismay to the day when Dick would need her no longer. The three boys had come racing across from school directly the unfeeling claims of education ceased to hold them. Afternoon tea with Dick had become an institution that was seriously threatening the claims of cricket, insomuch that Melville, the school captain, was endeavouring to screw himself to the point of exercising his authority in the matter. He found it difficult to be authoritative. It was not so very long since the day when Mr. and Mrs. Lester had kept their vigil in the Quiet Street, when, in the school chapel, the boys had gathered while the chaplain prayed for Dick Lester, whose feet were in the Valley of the Shadow.

Melville himself had been to tea on the balcony since then, and it is safe to say that at no time had Dick been so near pride as when the great man, rather shy and tongue-tied at first in the presence of Mrs. Lester, had sat on his couch and talked to him, a scrubby junior, as an equal!

"You've got to look sharp and well, you know, Lester," he had said, at parting. "We want all our men badly; the Wesley and Scotch juniors are going to take a heap of beating next term!" Which had left Dick speechless, yet glowing. He astonished the nurse that evening by demanding two eggs for tea!

Neil Fraser had brought his mother this afternoon--a sweet-faced old lady, who sat beaming alternately on her tall son, and on the "case" that had already made his name a household word among surgeons. And John Lester leaned against the balcony rail, smoking, and looking contentedly at his son.

Dick's feet were very uncertain still. He had discarded crutches after a few days' use, declaring that they hurt him more than they helped him. Then he had hobbled, with a stick or between two helpers; only the day before had he suddenly declared that he would walk alone--and had walked! A few steps, at first, from his couch to his mother; subsiding on her, flushed and laughing, while she caught him to her and held him, as she had done when, twelve years before, his baby feet had first carried him to her across the nursery floor. She remembered yet the pride of that long ago day. It was a small thing beside the utter thankfulness of this.

The hospital was keenly interested in Dick's convalescence. It was not often that they had a patient so doggedly determined to get well. He demanded instructions as to working his muscles, and struggled with them as soon as he was permitted, rubbing himself, moving limbs that no longer seemed to belong to him, and performing the limited amount of "physical jerks" possible to one who lies flat in bed. The scope of his energies widened as he was allowed to sit up; he learned from Neil Fraser and from the masseur who visited him daily how to second their efforts, and the nurses found him, at regular intervals, exercising solemnly, grimacing with pain at the creaking of his unused muscles, and working the harder the more he grimaced. The pretty girl in room five, who had just lost her appendix, and the stout old gentleman in three, very bad-tempered with the gout, used to ask their nurses each morning how many inches young Lester had moved since breakfast, and send him messages of congratulation; the matron, tall and beautiful in snowy white, would stand at the end of his bed, cheering him on, with an eye wary for signs of fatigue. And when he sat up--and when he first hobbled on his crutches--the word ran from room to room, and the nurses left their work to peep in at him and applaud. Even the bad-tempered old gentleman, who was wont to drive his nurse almost to tears if a stray sound penetrated his room, was found only smiling on the morning that Dick, forgetting his surroundings in the triumph of his first steps, sat on the end of his bed and woke the echoes with a shout of "Buck up, School!"

In the intervals of exercising there came over him a great peace; something altogether different from the weary patience of the months when he had lain helpless. He seemed to want nothing if his mother were near; looking at her, he would lie quietly, his happy face so peaceful that a tired night nurse, peeping in, declared to a comrade that only to look at that Lester boy made you feel as if you'd had a night's sleep and a cold swim! Not until long after did he confide to his mother what the dread and terror of those first months had been. "It was only you who kept me going," he said. "I knew the others thought I was always going to lie there; only you told me my back wasn't broken--that I'd be better some day. I just hung on to that, when everything else in the world was black, 'cause I knew you'd never tell me a lie!"

Peace too, had come to Merle. Something of her burden lifted upon the ship--when Dick's father and mother had heard from her stumbling lips the story of how she had found Neil Fraser, and had thanked her as best they might. The rest had rolled away on the day of the operation. She had known nothing of it until it was over; they had agreed that she had already borne sufficient strain. She only knew that heaven had suddenly come out of darkness when Mrs. Lester, her worn face smiling through tears, had taken her in her arms and told her that Dick would walk again.

They did not want her to go back to Narrung for a year. So much of shock and horror and bitter self-reproach hung over the vision of her home that they dreaded what might be the effect of returning too soon; besides which, Dick declared that he wanted old "Legs" at Kurrajong--and nobody just then denied Dick anything, which made it fortunate that he was a sweet-natured and unexacting person. So Mrs. Lester had written to ask if Merle might be her daughter for a year--to go to a good boarding-school, returning to Kurrajong, with Dick and his mates, for the holidays. Already Bottles and Teddy and Nugent had unknowingly done much to convince Merle that she might have been wrong in believing that all boys were beasts! She was beginning to laugh naturally; to make, occasionally, remarks that were more than curt monosyllables. "She's getting quite human!" Dick's nurses said.

They were planning the return to Kurrajong that afternoon on the hospital balcony. In a few days they were to go down to a hotel by the sea, where Dick could lie in the sand and let sun and ozone have a share in completing his cure. Mr. and Mrs. Lester would leave him there with a nurse in charge, while they paid a flying visit to their home, to make sure that everything was in readiness for the real return. They would come back for Dick and Merle.

"And that will make it just about breaking-up time," Dick said. "So you three chaps can join up, and we'll all go home in a bunch. Glory, won't it be a day!"

"And Mrs. Fraser and the doctor will come for Christmas," Mrs. Lester said, smiling at them over Dick's head.

"I think you had better arrange to travel with us, Fraser," Mr. Lester said. "I'll need some support if I have to take all these young people home. Four--five of them; and a wife who always forgot to grow up! You can't expect a man to handle an unbroken team like that single-handed!"

"Don't you worry, sir," said Bottles ponderously. "I can sit on any two of 'em at once--except Mrs. Lester!" he added hastily, with a furious blush.

The others roared unkindly.

"I'd hate you to try, Bottles dear!" said Mrs. Lester--whereat the unfortunate Master Glass reddened yet more painfully.

"It'll be jolly dull for you chaps, I'm afraid," Dick said. "They won't let me ride or play tennis, or do anything, for a bit. You'll just have to find your way about, and get busy on the station. There'll be plenty of work for them, won't there, father?"

"Any amount," said his father. "I'll start a bush fire, if necessary, to prevent their feeling bored. Merle, how are you at fire fighting?"

"Had too much, thanks," said Merle.

"Then I can't entertain you that way. How is your tennis?"

"Rotten," said Merle, with emphasis.

"So's mine, Merle," said Bottles. "Never mind--you and I'll go out together and kill snakes!"

"Right," said Merle, unusually cheerful. "I'd like that!"

"There's something unexpected about you; but give me guests who are willing to entertain themselves," said Mr. Lester, laughing. "We had a man out from Scotland once who turned down all our schemes for his amusement. But he never gave us any trouble; whenever we missed him he was sure to be down in the pig paddock looking at my Berkshires! Queer taste, but it kept him happy."

"When you begin to tell calumnious stories about my nation, it's time we went, isn't it, mother?" said Neil Fraser. "Pigs, indeed! Are you sure your Scot wasn't an Irishman, Lester?"

"He was not--and I never saw an Irishman who would look at a pig when a horse was about," Mr. Lester remarked. "Not that I think there was any love of my pigs, as pigs, on M'Glashan's part; he was a confirmed mathematician, and he was merely calculating the amount of bacon those Berkshires would cut into! Must you really go?"

"I must--apart from the painful nature of your conversation," Fraser said, laughing. "I'm taking this young mother of mine to the theatre to-night, and she must have a rest first."

They said good-bye, and disappeared through the long window. Teddy Raine rose.

"Come on, you fellows," he said. "I must take 'em back, Mrs. Lester, or poor old Melville'll be throwing fits. Cricket practice has slumped since you people came here." He patted Dick's head, his merry face gentle. "Going to have a mighty supper in the dormer to-night, old thing!" he said. "Wish you were going to be there."

"I wish I was!" said Dick ruefully. "Never mind, there'll be lots next term!"

"And we'll drink more power to your old back," said Teddy, "in raspberry vinegar!"

"Out of a soap-dish lid?" queried Mrs. Lester demurely.

"Now, you know too much, Mrs. Lester," Teddy reproached her. "'Spose this fellow revealed all our black secrets when he was delirious. You ought to be ashamed, anyhow, Lester. No chap in our form was ever delirious before!"

"Why, I thought it was your normal condition!" said Mr. Lester.

"That's one below the belt!" murmured Bottles, amidst the laughter. "Come on, chaps, we're not appreciated here--or anywhere else! It doesn't matter!" They clattered downstairs, to the profound wrath of the bad-tempered old gentleman. Dick propped himself on one elbow to wave to them as they raced down to the gate.

"Want to be going with them, old son?" his father asked.

Dick shook his head contentedly.

"No," he said. "Next term I will, I s'pose--when my silly old back is in going order again. But just now"--his eyes lingered on his father and mother--"between you two and old 'Legs,' and learning to walk--well, I've just got jolly well all I want."

THE END.

* * * * *

STORIES BY

MARY GRANT BRUCE

Published by WARD, LOCK & CO., LTD.

OF WHICH MORE THAN 320,000 COPIES OF THE ORIGINAL EDITIONS HAVE BEEN SOLD

"THESE BOOKS SHOULD FIND A PLACE AMONGST ENGLISH STORIES; THEY BRING A TOUCH OF SOMETHING STRANGE AND YET AKIN TO THEIR READERS HERE, AND MAY HELP TO AWAKEN NEW INTERESTS."--The Times.

A LITTLE BUSH MAID MATES AT BILLABONG TIMOTHY IN BUSHLAND GLEN EYRE NORAH OF BILLABONG GRAY'S HOLLOW FROM BILLABONG TO LONDON JIM AND WALLY 'POSSUM DICK CAPTAIN JIM DICK LESTER OF KURRAJONG BACK TO BILLABONG THE STONE AXE OF BURKAMUKK THE TWINS OF EMU PLAINS BILLABONG'S DAUGHTER THE HOUSES OF THE EAGLE THE TOWER ROOMS BILLABONG ADVENTURERS GOLDEN FIDDLES THE HAPPY TRAVELLERS

End of Project Gutenberg's Dick Lester of Kurrajong, by Mary Grant Bruce