al. "You are a fine young fellow.
I'll see you safe through this, and help you throw dust in your mother's
eyes. If you go to her with that scratched face, we are lost. Come, get
into my carriage, and home with me."

"Mayn't I wash my face first? And look at my shirt: as black as a
cinder."

"Wash your face, by all means: but you can button your coat over your
shirt."

The coat was soon brought, and so was a pail of water and a piece of
yellow soap. Little dashed his head and face into the bucket, and soon
inked all the water. The explosion had filled his hair with black dust,
and grimed his face and neck like a sweep's. This ablution made him
clean, but did not bring back his ruddy color. He looked pale and
scratched.

The men helped him officiously into the carriage, though he could have
walked very well alone.

Henry asked leave to buy a clean shirt. The doctor said he would lend
him one at home.

While Henry was putting it on Dr. Amboyne ordered his dog-cart instead
of his brougham, and mixed some medicines. And soon Henry found himself
seated in the dog-cart, with a warm cloak over him, and whisking over
the stones of Hillsborough.

All this had been done so rapidly and unhesitatingly that Henry, injured
and shaken as he was, had yielded passive obedience. But now he began to
demur a little. "But where are we going, sir?" he asked.

"To change the air and the scene. I'll be frank with you--you are man
enough to bear the truth--you have received a shock that will very
likely bring on brain-fever, unless you get some sleep tonight. But you
would not sleep in Hillsborough. You'd wake a dozen times in the night,
trembling like an aspen leaf, and fancying you were blown up again."

"Yes, but my mother, sir! If I don't go home at seven o'clock, she'll
find me out."

"If you went crazy wouldn't she find you out? Come, my young friend,
trust to my experience, and to the interest this attempt to murder you,
and your narrow escape, have inspired in me. When I have landed you in
the Temple of Health, and just wasted a little advice on a pig-headed
patient in the neighborhood (he is the squire of the place), I'll drive
back to Hillsborough, and tell your mother some story or other: you and
I will concoct that together as we go."

At this Henry was all obedience, and indeed thanked him, with the tears
in his eyes, for his kindness to a poor stranger.

Dr. Amboyne smiled. "If you were not a stranger, you would kn