dn't let me before."

"Oh, I know, Tom; Mary has told me every day about you, and how she was
obliged to make the Doctor speak to you to keep you away. I'm very glad
you didn't get up, for you might have caught it; and you couldn't stand
being ill, with all the matches going on. And you're in the eleven, too,
I hear. I'm so glad."

"Yes; ain't it jolly?" said Tom proudly. "I'm ninth too. I made forty at
the last pie-match, and caught three fellows out. So I was put in
above Jones and Tucker. Tucker's so savage, for he was head of the
twenty-two."

"Well, I think you ought to be higher yet," said Arthur, who was as
jealous for the renown of Tom in games as Tom was for his as a scholar.

"Never mind. I don't care about cricket or anything now you're getting
well, Geordie; and I shouldn't have hurt, I know, if they'd have let me
come up. Nothing hurts me. But you'll get about now directly, won't you?
You won't believe how clean I've kept the study. All your things are
just as you left them; and I feed the old magpie just when you used,
though I have to come in from big-side for him, the old rip. He won't
look pleased all I can do, and sticks his head first on one side and
then on the other, and blinks at me before he'll begin to eat, till I'm
half inclined to box his ears. And whenever East comes in, you should
see him hop off to the window, dot and go one, though Harry wouldn't
touch a feather of him now."

Arthur laughed. "Old Gravey has a good memory; he can't forget the
sieges of poor Martin's den in old times." He paused a moment, and then
went on: "You can't think how often I've been thinking of old Martin
since I've been ill. I suppose one's mind gets restless, and likes to
wander off to strange, unknown places. I wonder what queer new pets the
old boy has got. How he must be revelling in the thousand new birds,
beasts, and fishes!"

Tom felt a pang of jealousy, but kicked it out in a moment. "Fancy him
on a South Sea island, with the Cherokees, or Patagonians, or some
such wild niggers!" (Tom's ethnology and geography were faulty,
but sufficient for his needs.) "They'll make the old Madman cock
medicine-man, and tattoo him all over. Perhaps he's cutting about now
all blue, and has a squaw and a wigwam. He'll improve their boomerangs,
and be able to throw them too, without having old Thomas sent after him
by the Doctor to take them away."

Arthur laughed at the remembrance of the boomerang story, but then
l