Sitting in the little cottage, stroking Joseph’s hands, suddenly he heard voices coming—the shy little laugh of Battle Jimmie and, running through Jimmie’s chatter like a silver thread, a voice which startled him—a familiar voice he could not place, but which seemed rich with a peculiar magic that attaches itself to the beloved.
Softly laying Joseph’s hands back on the cot, he tiptoed to the door and saw—Jimmie and Mrs. Sessions, his dream-lady of the lavender-scented attic!
And his greeting to her might have been the shy effusiveness of a boy lover of eighteen.
“Why—it isn’t you, is it? I told him to ask for you, but I didn’t dare to hope—And it’s really you!”
“Guess it is!” chuckled the old lady delicately. “I—somehow—”
She blushed and hesitated. Then she frowned—oh, such a portentous frown!—as she suddenly remembered that she was a nurse in the service of U. S. A., and said severely:
“Who’s the patient?”
“It’s—my—son,” faltered Dad.
“Oh, my dear! Has he—bullied you again as he used to?” she said, with the quick, familiar affection of two who have gone through the same trials together.
“No, ma’am; he’s never done that, I shouldn’t say. But somehow we do seem a little nearer together now.”