“Thank you, if you will,” Mrs. Baird replied.
And together they lifted Betty into the back of the carriage. The steamer rug enveloped her like a mummy cloth, but as they got her safely on the seat, one corner of it fell away, and revealed to the red-headed boy her white face and blue lips, that tried so bravely to smile up into his eyes.
The carriage jogged off at a snail’s pace—Mrs. Baird knelt on the floor beside Betty, the girls walked along the road easily keeping up with it.
The red-headed boy watched the queer procession;
he still held his hat in his hand, and his flaming hair was the last thing the girls saw.
Hours later, safe in the infirmary, surrounded by hot water bottles and woolly blankets, Betty opened her eyes—she had been asleep—and encountered those of Mrs. Baird.
“What was his name?” she asked drowsily.
“My darling child, I forgot to ask him!” exclaimed Mrs. Baird; “how very remiss of me.”
Betty’s gaze wandered around the room, then her eyes closed again.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said slowly. “He’d always have been just the red-headed boy to me.”