The Argosy — page 113: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

é BY RIGHT OF SWORD. 395 you looked at me. But now that you bring me down to earth with a rush, I begin to remember it. It is nothing much and will best wait till we are in Moscow.”’ ‘“Do you think I will let any one see that wound before I do? Why, it was gained for my sake. And youlove me? And now’’—‘‘ now” was a long loving kiss and ~-a lingering look into my face as she held it between her hands while her eyes were radiant with delight. Then she sighed. ‘‘ Now, I am all sister again.”’ I was looking my doubts of this and meant to test them, shaking my head in strong disbelief, when the carriage stopped suddenly. Looking out I saw that we were at the inn, and must therefore have been driving long over an hour. It had seemed scarce a minute. “Will you get out, while we change horses, sir?’’ asked the prince’s servant, who had come with the carriage on horseback. ‘‘ My brother is wounded and must have attendance at once,’’ said Olga, in so self possessed a tone that I smiled. aoe ‘‘ Only a scratch,’’ said I, as if impatiently. ‘‘ But my sister is always fidgety.’”’ We went into the house then and Olga insisted on examining the wound, and when she saw the blood I had lost—not much, but making brave show on my white linen—she was all solicitude and anxiety. She sent the maids flying this way and that, one to fetch hot water, another bandages, a third lint, and altogether made such a commotion in the place that one would have thought I had been brought there to die. She bathed the little spot so tenderly and delicately, too, asking every moment if her touch hurt me ; and she washed it and then covered it, band- aged it and bound it up, and did everything with such infinite care, that I was almost glad I had been wounded. And the whole process she accompanied with a running fire of would be scolding comment upon the trouble that brothers gave, the obstinate creatures they were, the rash and foolish things they did, how much more bother they were than sisters, and a great deal more to the same effect—till I thought the people would see through the acting as clearly as I did, assisted as I was by the thousand little glints and glances she threw to me when the others were not looking our way. Then she held a long consultation with the landlady, a large woman, who seemed as kindly at heart as she was portly in body, whether it would be safe for me to go onto the city that night, or whether a doctor had not better be brought out to me there, and it took the persuasion and assur- ances of us all to win her consent to my going on. I tried to punish her for this when we were in the carriage again, by telling her I supposed she was! unwilling to travel in my company. But I wasted my breath and my efforts, as she was all the way in the highest ‘spirits. ‘‘I don’t quite know which I like better,’’ she said, laughing; ‘‘ being sister with a knowledge of—of something else, as I was just now at the inn, or—or a (x) Eomichook (S@)