"Horses!" he said. "Horses! Gee!"
A laugh, utterly out of proportion to the wasted little body from which it emerged, rang through the ward.
"I'm afraid you are getting too excited," Blue Bonnet cautioned. "I'll have to take them away if you make yourself ill with them."
The boy caught up as many of the soldiers and horses as he could, and held to them tightly.
"You can't get 'em," he said, and the brown eyes flashed. "I wouldn't give 'em up to nobody."
"You don't have to give them up. You mustn't get excited, that's all. It's bad for sick people; it gives them fever."
"Aw—I gets fever anyway. I'm used to it. I'm 'bercular! It's in my knee."
"A tubercular knee?"
The boy nodded, and thrusting a pitifully thin leg from beneath the covers, showed a knee carefully bandaged. Blue Bonnet hastily covered it, asking his name by way of changing the subject.
"Gabriel," came the quick answer.