Then he understood.
The vein that had been tapped—it was assuredly no artery nor even one of the very largest veins—had bled in crass profusion for a space. Then the caking of the blood had checked further flow.
Dad was surgeon enough to realize that that meant there could be little if any more flow of blood from so petty a wound.
He was looking from side to side in search of something better than a uniform jacket wherewith to bind the hurt, when again the little lady stood before him.
Tucked under one arm was a black case, under the other were rolls of white bandages. In both hands she bore a basin of hot water in which a soft sponge bobbed like a floating island.
“There!” she said soothingly. “Just you lean back and rest. I’ll ’tend to the wound.”
With deft fingers she bathed the arm, then sponged the bullet-graze clean of blood. From the black case she drew a bottle filled with some pungent liquid. With this liquid she washed out the wound, then proceeded to bind it skillfully with a roll of the bandages.
So slight was the hurt that, but for the accident of its touching the wrong vein, it might well have caused so healthy a man no more annoyance than would the process of vaccination.
Yet for once in his life Dad felt no inclination to belittle a physical mishap.
He discovered—and wondered vaguely at the discovery—that it was marvelously pleasant to lie back like this and let his strange little hostess minister to his hurt. Her touch, too, held for him a strange and soothing magnetism all its own. Not for twenty years had a gentlewoman laid her hand upon him.