[The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn by Henry Kingsley]@TWC D-Link bookThe Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn CHAPTER XXIX 25/27
A man who could make such play as you did to-day, with a stick, ought to have nothing but a big three-foot of blue steel in his hand, and Her Majesty's commission to use it against her enemies." "That will come," said Jim, "the day after Sam has got the right to look after Alice; not before; the governor is too fond of his logarithms." When Sam came to dress for dinner he found that he was bruised all over, and had to go to the Captain for "shin plaster," as he called it. Captain Brentwood had lately been trying homeopathy, which in his case, there being nothing the matter with him, was a decided success.
He doctored Sam with Arnica externally, and gave him the five-hundredth of a grain of something to swallow; but what made Sam forget his bruises quicker than these dangerous and violent remedies, was the delightful change in Alice's behaviour.
She was so agreeable that evening, that he was in the seventh heaven; the only drawback to his happiness being poor Cecil Mayford's utter distraction and misery.
Next morning, too, after a swim in the river, he handled such a singularly good knife and fork, that Halbert told Jim privately, that if he, Sam, continued to sport such a confoundedly good appetite, he would have to be carried half-a-mile on a heifer's horns and left for dead, to keep up the romantic effect of his tumble the day before. They were sitting at breakfast, when the door opened, and there appeared before the assembled company the lithe lad I spoke of yesterday, who said,-- "Beg your pardon, sir; child lost, sir." They all started up.
"Whose child ?" asked the Captain. "James Grewer's child, sir, at the wattle hut." "Oh!" said Alice, turning to Sam, "it is that pretty little boy up the river that we were admiring so last week." "When was he lost ?" asked Major Buckley. "Two days now, sir," said the lad. "But the hut is on the plain side of the river," said the Major; "he can't be lost on the plains." "The river is very low, sir," said the lad; "hardly ancle deep just there.
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