E. W. Hornung

“ Ronnie lay hot and dry in his bed, but brown and bright as he had looked upon the ice, and sizzling with the exuberance of a welcome that warmed my heart. He told me, of course, that it was "awful rot" losing the last day like this; but, on the other hand, he seemed delighted with his room—he always was delighted with something—and professed himself rather glad of an opportunity of appreciating it as it deserved. Indeed, there was not a lazy bone in his little body, and I doubt if he had spent an unnecessary minute in his bedroom all the holidays. ”

“ I never knew a man with more; it came out every hour that we spent together, and before long it was needed almost every minute. One day Delavoye dashed into the office in town clothes and with a tragic face.
"They want a second nurse! It's come to that already," he said, "and I'm going up about it now."
"But isn't that the doctor's job?" I asked, liking the looks of him as little as his news.
"I can't help it if it is, Gilly! I must lend a hand somehow or I shall crack up. It's little enough one can do, besides being day-nurse to poor old Coplestone, and this afternoon he's asleep for once. ”

“ But as a rule Ronnie was sizzling with happiness and excitement; and it was my privilege to see a lot of him those hot holidays. Coplestone did not go away for a single night or day. Most mornings one met him and his boy in flannels, on their way down to the river, laden with their lunch. But because the exclusive society of the best of boys must eventually bore the most affectionate of men, I was sometimes invited to join the picnic, and on Saturdays and Sundays I accepted more than once. ”

“ She wasn't really a nurse, but she was his mother; she was his Angel of Life."
"Will she be forgiven?" I asked, when we had looked askance at the study windows, that gave us back only the wavering reflection of shrubs and of the chimneys opposite.
"Will she forgive?" returned Uvo sardonically. "It's always harder for the one who's in the wrong, and there's always something to be said for him or her!"
"Does she know that her husband needs to be saved as well?"
"Hush!" said Delavoye. The door had opened. Coplestone came out upon the step, and stood there feeling in his pockets. ”

“ Often after that, when he came down of an afternoon, he would look in at the office and leave me his Pall Mall. And he brought the boy in with him on the first day of the midsummer holidays.
"Ronnie's a keen cricketer at present," said Coplestone on that occasion. "But he's got to be a wet-bob like his old governor when he goes on to Eton. That's what we're here for, isn't it, Ronnie? We're going to take each other on the river every blessed day of the holidays." ”

“ It froze, more or less, all the rest of those holidays, and the Coplestones never missed a day until the last of all. I was hoping to find them on the ice at dusk, if only I could manage to get away in time, but early in the afternoon Uvo Delavoye came along to disabuse my mind.
"That young Ronnie's caught a chill," said he—"I thought he would. It'll keep him at home for another day or two, so the ill wind may blow old Coplestone a bit of good. I'm feeling a bit anxious about him, Gilly; wild horses won't drag him from this haunted hill! ”

“ The boy was strong and healthy, and capable of throwing off at least as much as most strong men. He was also a capital little patient—and Coplestone was a magnificent patient's father. He did not harry the doctors; he treated the elderly Scotch nurse like a queen; he was not always in and out of the sick-room by day, and he never set foot in it during the night. In the daytime Delavoye took him for long walks, and I would sit up with him at night until he started nodding in his chair. ”

“ Coplestone would only go so far as to bemoan the probability of an entirely lost hockey term, and his eye would steal round to the photograph of last year's hockey eleven at Ronnie's little school, in a place of honour on the mantelpiece, where indeed it concealed one of his own most heroic trophies. ”

“ I told him we had Coplestone down here, and asked him if it was true that he had ever been off the rails like this before, only without breathing a word about his being off them now. Sawrey-Biggerstaff swore that he had never heard of such a libel, or struck a more abstemious hound than Harry Coplestone, or ever heard of him being or ever having been anything else! So you must see what it all means, Gilly."
"It means that he's never got over the loss of his wife."
"But that happened nearly three years ago. Ronnie told me. Why didn't the old boy break out before? ”

“ There were also a number of parti-coloured caps under suspended oars, and more silver in the shape of cups, salvers, and engraved cigarette boxes than his modest staff of servants could possibly keep clean. ”