"I'm extremely sorry, Lord Kilmore," he said, "but I am afraid I hurt your nephew last night."
"Not very," said Bob. "Collar bone and a couple of ribs. I saw the doctor this morning."
"Yes. It wasn't altogether my fault. I mean to say--"
"I'm sure it was altogether Godfrey's," I said. "The thing which surprises me is that nobody ever did it before. Godfrey is nearly thirty, so for twenty years at least every man he has met must have been tempted to break his ribs. We must, in spite of what everybody says, be a Christian nation. If we were not--"
"He would keep following me about," said Bob. "I told him several times to clear away and go home. But he wouldn't."
"He has a fixed idea that you're engaged in smuggling."
"Even if I was," said Bob, "it would be no business of his."
"That's just why he mixes himself up in it. If it had been his business he wouldn't have touched it. There's nothing Godfrey hates more than doing anything he ought to do."
"I'm awfully glad you take it that way," said Bob. "I was afraid--"
"My dear fellow," I said, "I'm delighted. But you haven't told me yet exactly how it happened."
"I was moving a packing-case," said Bob, "a rather large one--"
He hesitated. I think he felt that the packing-case might require some explanation, especially as it was being moved at about eleven o'clock at night. I hastened to reassure him.
"Quite a proper thing for you to be doing," I said, "and certainly no business of Godfrey's. Every one has a perfect right to move packing-cases about from place to place."
"He told me he was going for the police, so--"
"I don't think you need have taken any notice of that threat. The police know Godfrey quite well. They hate being worried just as much as I do."
"You must have hit him in several places at once," I said, "to have broken so many bones."
"The fact is," said Bob, "that he got up again."
"That's just the sort of thing he would do. Any man of ordinary good feeling would have known that when he was knocked down he was meant to stay down."
"Then the two other men who were with me, young fellows out of the town, set on him."
"Was one of them particularly freckly?" I asked.
"If he was it would account for my daughter's maid getting hold of an inaccurate version of the story this morning. But it doesn't matter. Go on with what you were saying."