"I'll go at once, orderly. I should have been told before," she replied; and burying her own heartache, she hurried to the men's quarters. Her anxious eyes sought the surgeon's. "Oh, doctor!" she said, "this poor fellow must be looked after. What can I do to help?"
"Everything, Mrs. Lysle," gruffed the surgeon with a professional air. "He is very ill. He must be kept wrapped in hot linseed poultices and—"
"Oh, I say, doctor," remonstrated poor O'Keefe, "I'm not that bad."
"You're a very sick man," scowled the surgeon. "Now, Mrs. Lysle has graciously offered to help nurse you. She'll see that you have hot fomentations every half hour. I'll drop in twice a day to see how you are getting along." And with that miserable prospect before him, poor O'Keefe watched the surgeon disappear.
"I simply had to order those half-hour fomentations, old man," apologized the surgeon that night. "You see, she must be kept busy—just kept at it every minute we can make her do so. Do you think you can stand it?"
"Of course I can," fumed the victim. "But for goodness' sake, don't put me on sick rations! I'll die, sure, if you do."
"I've ordered you the best the commissariat boasts—heaps of meat, butter, even eggs, my boy. Think of it—eggs—you lucky young Turk!" laughed the surgeon.
Then followed nights and days of torture. The "boys" would line up to the "sick-room" four times daily, and blandly ask how he was.
"How am I?" young O'Keefe would bellow. "How am I? I'm well and strong enough to brain every one of you fellows, surgeon included, when I get out of this!"
"But when are you going to get out? When will you be out danger?" they would chuckle.