What a story!
He shook his head over it, comparing it with Treasure Island and all the others, and wishing he had it written down, and marveling again over the rare courage of its heroine. To be scolded and whipped was one thing; it was quite another to be stood up against a wall in front of a line of guns. And he remembered that he—a boy—had not been able, this very day, to take even a strapping! What if he had been asked to accept death?
How far away—yes, as if it were days and days ago!—seemed that order of Big Tom's to go out and sell Cis's flowers! That was because this wonderful, heart-moving tragedy of Edith Cavell's had happened in between! As the sky slowly became overcast, and the darkness deepened, he set himself to think the nurse there on the roof beside him—a whiteclad, slender figure.
He had done her a wrong in questioning the bravery of girls, and she had died with her hands tied! "Oh, my!" he breathed apologetically to the picture which his imagination made of her, "if I was only half as brave as you!"
He could keep her there before him not longer than a moment. Then she wavered and went, and he found himself standing beside his blanket roll. Though he covered his eyes to make his pretend more vivid, she would not return.
However, she was to come again one day—to come and sustain him in an hour of dreadful trial that was ahead, though now, mercifully, he did not know it. And there was to be another story, just as thrilling, if not more so, which also would help him in that hour; and, later on, would carry him through darker ones.
With new visions in his brain, and new resolutions in his boy's heart, he took up the bedding bundle and went back to the flat. There he fell asleep in a room where seventeen pink rosebuds spread their perfume.
