“Yes, Miss.”
“How long was that ago?”
“They removed him about ten minutes before you entered the ward, Miss.”
“So they are even now at their dreadful work! They have him even now stretched upon the ghastly operating board, and are torturing his nerves and flesh with knife and saw!” shuddered Elfie. “Oh, Albert! oh, my love, my love, if I could bear it for you!”
And the loyal Union girl, who had discarded and defied her rebel lover in the days of his pride and his power, and who had believed her own words when she told him that the one burning aspiration of her heart was to see him hanged for his treason, now burst into a convulsion of sobs, and wept over his sufferings the sorest tears she had ever shed in her life.
“Don’t distress yourself so much, Miss. He will not feel it. He will know nothing after he is stretched upon the operating board until it is all over. They are going to give him chloroform,” said the young soldier, trying to comfort the weeping woman.
Elfie struggled to regain her self-command. She recollected with compunction that the hospital ward was not the place to indulge in the exhibition of strong emotions.
“Listen, Miss,” said the soldier boy—“I know he will not feel it. See, Miss—I had my leg taken off two weeks ago, and I never felt it; and just look how well I’m getting over it.”
There was an instantaneous sympathy in all the words and looks and actions of the impulsive girl.
“You had your leg taken off! And you are so quiet and patient and cheerful under it all! Oh, my poor boy, I didn’t know it! I didn’t, indeed, my poor child, or I wouldn’t have been so indifferent to you!” she said, speaking to this young soldier, near her own age, as if he had been her son, or her little brother; and kneeling down by his bed to bring her compassionate face closer to his own.