Page:Doctor Thorne.djvu/375

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
SIR LOUIS LEAVES GRESHAMSBURY.
371

Immediately after breakfast, the baronet had inquired after his own servant. 'His confounded nose must be right by this time, I suppose?'

'It was very bad, Sir Louis,' said the old woman, who imagined that it might be difficult to induce Jonah to come into the house again.

'A man in such a place as his has no business to be laid up,' said the master, with a whine. 'I'll see and get a man who won't break his nose.'

Thomas was sent to the inn three or four times, but in vain. The man was sitting up, well enough, in the tap-room; but the middle of his face was covered with streaks of plaster, and he could not bring himself to expose his wounds before his conqueror.

Sir Louis began by ordering the woman to bring him chasse-café. She offered him coffee, as much as he would; but no chasse. 'A glass of port wine,' she said, 'at twelve o'clock, and another at three had been ordered for him.'

'I don't care a —— for the orders,' said Sir Louis; 'send me my own man.' The man was again sent for; but would not come. 'There's a bottle of stuff that I take, in that portmanteau, in the left-hand corner—just hand it to me.'

But Janet was not to be done. She would give him no stuff, except what the doctor had ordered, till the doctor came back. The doctor would then, no doubt, give him anything that was proper.

Sir Louis swore a good deal, and stormed as much as he could. He drank, however, his two glasses of wine, and he got no more. Once or twice he essayed to get out of bed and dress; but, at every effort, he found that he could not do it without Joe: and there he was, still under the clothes when the doctor returned.

'I'll tell you what it is,' said he, as soon as his guardian entered the room, 'I'm not going to be made a prisoner of here.'

'A prisoner! no, surely not.'

'It seems very much like it at present. Your servant here—that old woman—takes it upon her to say she'll do nothing without your orders.'

'Well; she's right there.'

'Right! I don't know what you call right; but I won't stand it. You are not going to make a child of me, Dr. Thorne; so you need not think it.'

And then there was a long quarrel between them, and but an indifferent reconciliation. The baronet said that he would go to Boxall Hill, and was vehement in his intention to do so because