“But you’re forgetting Blazes,” she said mischievously.
“Blazes!” he ejaculated. “To blazes with Blazes. Fancy Blazes doing sick nurse! And, besides, his time will be fully occupied making chicken broth and jellies, and nourishing soups and things.”
“But you won’t need stimulating foods,” said Ess with a solemn face. “They’d make you feverish. Low diet and not too much of it for you, Aleck. A little gruel and perhaps a milk pudding now and then. Fortunately we’ve plenty of tinned milk.”
“Tinned milk nothing,” said Aleck, firmly. “This is my leg that’s broke, isn’t it? Well, I know what’s good for my own leg, don’t I? And don’t you imagine I don’t know all about what a sick chap gets. I’ve never had a turn myself, but I’ve read heaps of books about it, and I know just how the beautiful nurse has to hold the patient’s hand and soothe his fevered brow with cool fingers, and so on. D’you think my brow is getting fevered now, Miss Ess?”
Ess laughed a little, but then frowned anxiously. It was just after he had been brought in, and Scottie was finishing re-tying the splints, after satisfying himself that the setting was all right. Aleck’s face was grey and drawn, and the sweat stood in heavy beads on his forehead, but he still talked cheerfully.
“Only thing wrong about this,” he said, in aggrieved tones, “is your being engaged to Ned. You ought to fall in love with me, and marry me and live happy ever after. That’s what the nurse always does in the very best books.”
Then he quietly fainted again.
Aleck never knew how she had flinched under his gay badinage of engagements and marrying. But she undertook to nurse him, and resisted as stoutly as he did the suggestions that he should be taken down to the township, where a doctor could more easily be brought to him.
“I don’t want any doctors,” he said. “You’re a good enough surgeon for me, Scottie, and know as much about broken limbs as any doctor” (as indeed Scottie did). “And, besides, a doctor would take all the credit of mending it. This is going to be Miss Ess’s job, and if she brings it out that I have to dot-and-carry-one with a short foot or a shin as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, I—I’ll marry her to pay her out.”
“I can nurse him,” said Ess. “I’ll be glad to be so useful.”