The old man’s tired eyes suddenly grew bright with happy expectancy. Jimmie without turning to look divined the cause.
“I can see fine out of the back of my head,” announced the boy. “For instance, I can see the mail-courier coming down this row right now with the hospital post-bag under his arm.”
He twisted his head as he spoke, and pointed in triumph at the approaching post-bag bearer.
“See!” he exclaimed. “What did I tell you? Sometimes it just fairly scares me to think how clever I’m getting to be. Lay back and rest. I’ll jump over to the office tent, and I’ll bring you her letter the second it tumbles out of the bag.”
He was off at a dead run.
Dad looked after him with the feeble impatience of the convalescent. Mrs. Sessions’ letters had been the event of each day to him. Not until Dad had recovered consciousness had Jimmie written to the little lady that his grandfather was wounded.
A line from a staff surgeon, written at Jimmie’s plea, accompanied the letter, vouching for Dad’s recovery.
The little lady, unable to leave her post at Washington, had done her best to atone for her absence by long daily letters—letters as spicily, sweetly old-fashioned as a garden of cinnamon roses and lavender—letters containing learned exhortation as to the care the patient must take of his precious self; throbbing with egregious pride at the wounded man’s valor; seeking to entertain him by lively accounts of the daily happenings in Washington.
Small wonder that helpless old Dad looked forward to these daily epistles as a parched throat to cool drink.
Presently—or, as it seemed to Dad, after about two and a half centuries—Jimmie came back at the double.