When I expressed my sense of his kindness and talked about going home, he would smile gravely, and say: "Patience! You must be my guest until you have the full use of your limbs and are able to go about without help." After this I protested no more, for there was an indescribable something about Mr.Fortescue which would have made it difficult to contradict him, even had I been disposed to take so ungrateful and ungracious a part.
At length, after a weary interval of inaction and pain, came a time when I could get up and move about without discomfort, and one fine frosty day, which seemed the brightest of my life, Geist and Ramon helped me down-stairs and led me into a pretty little morning-room, opening into one of the conservatories, where the plants and flowers had been so arranged as to look like a sort of tropical forest, in the midst of which was an aviary filled with parrots, cockatoos, and other birds of brilliant plumage.
Geist brought me an easy-chair, Ramon a box of cigarettes and the "Times," and I was just settling down to a comfortable read and smoke, when Mr.
Fortescue entered from the conservatory.

He wore a Norfolk jacket and a broad-brimmed hat, and his step was so elastic, and his bearing so upright, and he seemed so strong and vigorous withal, that I began to think that in estimating his age at sixty I had made a mistake.

He looked more like fifty or fifty-five.
"I am glad to see you down-stairs," he said, helping himself to a cigarette.

"How do you feel ?" "Very much better, thank you, and to-morrow or the next day I must really--" "No, no, I cannot let you go yet.

I shall keep you, at any rate, a few days longer.