"Yes. I expect you're pretty well bruised from head to foot," he said in
a tone of commiseration.
Ann regarded him uncertainly.
"I feel so queer. What's happened to me? Where--where am I?" she asked.
Robin had the wisdom to answer her quite simply and naturally, telling
her in a few words just what had occurred, and, her mind once set at
rest, she lay back quietly and very soon dropped off into a sleep of sheer
exhaustion. Afterwards followed a timeless period marked by the comings and
goings of Maria with hot-water bottles and steaming cups of milk or broth,
alternating with intervals of profound slumber. Through it all, waking
or sleeping, ran a thread of wearisome pain--limbs so stiff and flesh so
bruised that it seemed to Ann as though the wontedly comfortable mattress
on which she lay had been stuffed with lumps of coal.
One break occurred in the ordered sequence of sleep and nourishment.
This happened when Tony quitted Silverquay to rejoin his uncle. The day
following Ann's enforced retirement to bed, a brusque letter had come
from the old man, in which he concealed a genuine longing to have his
nephew with him again beneath an irritable suggestion that he was probably
outstaying his welcome at the Cottage.
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