“I say—where’s the hotel? Just a step away? I’ll go around, then, and get a shave and a wash while you’re with him,” the father said, with a magnanimity which he somehow felt the powers might take account of in their subsequent dealings with George. If the boy was to live Campton could afford to be generous; and he had decided to assume that the boy would live, and to order his behaviour accordingly.
“I—thank you,” said Mr. Brant, turning toward the stairs.
“Five minutes at the outside!” Campton cautioned him, and hurried out into the morning air through which the guns still crashed methodically.
When he got back to the hospital, refreshed and decent, he was surprised, and for a moment alarmed, to find that Mr. Brant had not come down.
“Sending up his temperature, of course—damn him!” Campton raged, scrambling up the stairs as fast as his stiff leg permitted. But outside of George’s door he saw a small figure patiently mounting guard.
“I stayed with him less than five minutes; I was merely waiting to thank you.”
“Oh, that’s all right.” Campton paused, and then made his supreme effort. “How does he strike you?”
“Hopefully—hopefully. He had his joke as usual,” Mr. Brant said with a twitching smile.
“Oh, that——! But his temperature’s decidedly lower. Of course they may have to take the ball out of the lung; but perhaps before they do it he can be moved from this hell.”
The two men were silent, the same passion of anxiety consuming them, and no means left of communicating it to each other.