The gash was
behind and above my right ear, so I must have somersaulted down the
stairs. Margaret, as I learned later, had bathed and bandaged the wound,
and after my recovery of consciousness, it only gave me the happy trouble
of persuading Margaret that it gave me no trouble.
I stamped and shook myself experimentally, took a few strides, and jumped
once or twice, Margaret watching me as curiously and carefully as a hen
watches her first chicken.
"Do mind, Oliver!" she said. "It bled horribly, and you'll start it again."
"I believe I needed a blood-letting," said I.
"Should you ever need another," she said crisply, "I hope you'll take it
in the usual way. How did it happen?"
I had steeled myself for the inevitable question, and so answered
ruefully, "I must have tripped over the domino."
"If it were not your mother's I would never wear it again," she said,
plucking the skirt of it into her hand and shaking it as if it were a
naughty child. "I thought you would never come round. For nearly an hour,
I should think, you looked stone-dead. Then you just opened your eyes, but
closed them before I dared speak, and lay so at least another hour.
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