“What’s this I hear?  Been overdoing it?”

“What the deuce are you doing here?” I cried.  “Go away.  How dare you come when you’re not wanted?”

He grinned.  “I’m wanted right enough, old man.  The good Marigold’s never at fault.  He rang me up and I slipped round at once.”

“One of these days,” said I, “I’ll murder that fellow.”

He replied by gagging me with his beastly thermometer.  Then he felt my pulse and listened to my heart and stuck his fingers into the corners of my eyes, so as to look at the whites; and when he was quite satisfied with himself—­there is only one animal more self-complacent than your medical man in such circumstances, and that is a dog who has gorged himself with surreptitious meat—­he ordained that I should forthwith go properly to bed and stay there and be perfectly quiet until he came again, and in the meanwhile swallow some filthy medicine which he would send round.

“One of these days,” said he, rebukingly, “instead of murdering your devoted Sergeant, you’ll be murdering yourself, if you go on such lunatic excursions.  Of course I’m shocked at hearing about Colonel Boyce, and I’m sorry for the poor lady, but why you should have been made to half kill yourself over the matter is more than I can understand.”

“I happen,” said I, “to be his only intimate friend in the place.”

“You happen,” he retorted, “to be a chronic invalid and the most infernal worry of my life.”

“You’re nothing but an overbearing bully,” said I.

He grinned again.  That is what I have to put up with.  If I curse Marigold, he takes no notice.  If I curse Cliffe, he grins.  Yet what I should do without them, Heaven only knows.

“God bless ’em both,” said I, when my aching body was between the cool sheets.

Although it was none of his duties, Marigold brought me in a light supper, fish and a glass of champagne.  Never a parlour-maid would he allow to approach me when I was unwell.  I often wondered what would happen if I were really ill and required the attendance of a nurse.  I swear no nurse’s touch could be so gentle as when he raised me on the pillows.  He bent over the tray on the table by the bed and began to dissect out the back-bone of the sole.

“I can do that,” said I, fretfully.

He cocked a solitary reproachful eye on me.  I burst out laughing.  He looked so dear and ridiculous with his preposterous curly wig and his battered face.  He went on with his task.

“I wonder, Marigold,” said I, “how you put up with me.”

He did not reply until he had placed the neatly arranged tray across my body.

“I’ve never heard, sir,” said he, “as how a man couldn’t put up with his blessings.”

A bit of sole was on my fork and I was about to convey it to my mouth, but there came a sudden lump in my throat and I put the fork down.

“But what about the curses?”