The Britisher gave a chuckle from under the blankets pulled up about his chin. Bob began to wonder if he could be delirious, as Major Greyson had for a moment suspected. “Look here,” he demanded, “just what are you talking about?”
“Talking about you,” responded the Britisher, his eyes twinkling. “Cold in here, isn’t it?” He cautiously lowered the blanket to explain, “No less important news than this, Captain Bob Gordon. Henry Leslie is my cousin, too, and Arthur Leslie is my brother, and Janet is my sister——”
“You are Alan Leslie?” Bob almost managed to sit up in bed in his excitement. “You’re Arthur’s little brother, the s——” He stopped, growing suddenly red.
“That’s it, the 'silly ass’—identity complete,” finished Alan, quite unruffled. “I’d give you a handshake, cousin, old thing, if it could be done.”
“Alan Leslie!” Bob stared at him, his lips slowly parting in a smile divided between surprise at the odd chances of war and a dozen recollections of what he had heard of Alan in the past two years. He remembered Arthur Leslie standing in a doorway in some French village reading a letter in which Alan described his convalescence after a wound received in a burst of reckless bravery. Arthur had shaken his head as he muttered, “That silly ass Alan.”
“What happened to you, eh? Stopped a bullet?” asked Alan, studying Bob with his bright, untroubled eyes.
“My leg’s broken. My airplane fell and threw me out. I’m all right, they say. How long have you been up here, Alan?”
“Here? Let’s see. No, I’ve lost track. A week or two, I think, before the Bolshies caught me, and a few hundred years after that. Horrid brutes, Bolshies. Cold here, isn’t it? They might move me nearer the stove, I think. Where are your people, Bob? Funny I don’t know any of them and you’ve seen Arthur so often. Arthur’s the family pride, you know. Not a bad chap, Arthur.”
Under the negligent tone in which Alan spoke Bob divined the glowing admiration for his elder brother which had united the two in spite of all Alan’s follies. Like a true Britisher, Alan praised his brother in deprecating, ambiguous phrases. “Just as they praise England, or English exploits, in a negative, unwilling sort of way,” Bob thought. “It’s only if someone attacks them that they shed sparks.”
He began telling about his family and asking all the questions he had time to put in about the Leslies. When the first curiosity was satisfied on both sides Alan cast a doubtful glance toward Androvsky, who lay dozing on his cot.