"Never mind; I've almost finished. Now your leg. Which is it—right or left?"
"Left. But lor', if it was really shattered, I'd rather you touched t'other!"
"No, you wouldn't. You'd be grateful to me for saving your life. I'm going to whistle for help. Here comes a corporal. Where's my stretcher sling? Now, Marjorie, let us lift him quickly and gently. That was neatly done! We'll have him in hospital in record time."
Everybody enjoyed the afternoon, the patrols that performed the camp cookery, the first-aid workers, the nursing sisters at the hospital, and the elect few who were initiated into the elements of signalling.
Alison, who had helped to put up a tent, and given imaginary chloroform under the directions of a supposed army surgeon, was immensely proud of herself, and half-inclined to regard the work of the Red Cross Sisterhood as her vocation in life.
"It's ripping!" she declared. "I'd six of the jolliest boys for patients. One of them offered to faint as many times as I liked, and another (he was a cunning little scamp) assured me his case required beef tea immediately it was ready in the camp kitchen. He asked if I'd brought any chocolate. Another was so realistic, he insisted on shrieking every time I touched him, and he groaned till his throat must have ached. I think ambulance is the best fun going."
"We must beseech Miss Tempest to let us have another field day," said Grace Russell, who had been helping with the cookery and carrying round water. "We each want to practise every part of the work so as to be ready for emergencies. It isn't a really easy thing to give a prostrate patient a drink without nearly choking him. One doesn't know all the difficulties until one tries."
"One doesn't, indeed," said Ruth Harmon. "Field work isn't plain sailing. I wish we hadn't to catch the 4.15 train; I should have liked to stay longer. There's the signal to form and march. Aren't you coming, Alison?"
"No; I'm not going by train. My mother promised to drive over for me. I wonder she hasn't arrived."
"Will she come by the high road from Latchworth?" asked Dorothy. "Then walk home with Aunt Barbara and me. We shall very likely meet her on the way."