Quebec are quite as good and a little cheaper
than in Montreal; and I could go about in a carriage, you know, and put
in the time as well in one place as the other. I'm sure we could get on
very pleasantly there; and the colonel needn't be home for a month yet.
I suppose that I could hobble into the stores on a crutch."

Whilst Mrs. Ellison's monologue ran on with scarcely a break from Kitty,
her husband was gone to fetch her a cup of tea and such other light
refreshment as a lady may take after a swoon. When he returned she
bethought herself of Mr. Arbuton, who, having once come back to see if
all was going well, had vanished again.

"Why, our friend Boston is bearing up under his share of the morning's
work like a hero--or a lady with a sprained ankle," said the colonel as
he arranged the provision. "To see the havoc he's making in the ham and
eggs and chiccory is to be convinced that there is no appetizer like
regret for the sufferings of others."

"Why, and here's poor Kitty not had a bite yet!" cried Mrs. Ellison.
"Kitty, go off at once and get your breakfast. Put on my--"

"O, _don't_, Fanny, or I can't go; and I'm really very hungry."

"Well, I won't then," said Mrs. Ellison, seeing the rainy cloud in
Kitty's eyes. "Go just as you are, and don't mind me." And so Kitty
went, gathering courage at every pace, and sitting down opposite Mr.
Arbuton with a vivid color to be sure, but otherwise lion-bold. He had
been upbraiding the stars that had thrust him further and further at
every step into the intimacy of these people, as he called them to
himself. It was just twenty-four hours, he reflected, since he had met
them, and resolved to have nothing to do with them, and in that time the
young lady had brought him under the necessity of apologizing for a
blunder of her own; he had played the eavesdropper to her talk; he had
sentimentalized the midnight hour with her; they had all taken a morning
ride together; and he had ended by having Mrs. Ellison sprain her ankle
and faint in his arms. It was outrageous; and what made it worse was
that decency obliged him to take henceforth a regretful, deprecatory
attitude towards Mrs. Ellison, whom he liked least among these people.
So he sat vindictively eating an enormous breakfast, in a sort of angry
abstraction, from which Kitty's coming roused him to say that he hoped
Mrs. Ellison was better.

"O, very much! It's just a sprain."

"A sprain may be a very annoying thing,"