"Have you got a father?" he asked in eager accents; but Rupert looked at him as though he scarcely understood the question.
"Have you got a papa, little gentleman?" asked Jim, in his very low, faint tones, so unlike the old strong gruff voice that used to rise above the tumult of the winds and the waves.
"Torse I have," answered the child, almost indignantly. "I'll tell my papa about you. He'll like you because you got yourself hurted instead of me. My papa did that himself once. He got nearly killed, instead of somebody else. Mamma told me about it her own self. And the Queen gave him a cross for it. She showed it me. It wasn't so very pretty; but mamma said papa liked it better than anything else he had. Perhaps when I'm a man, I'll get one for myself; but mamma said they only gave them to very brave men. P'raps they'll give one to you, Jim. You're very brave, you know. When my papa comes home, I'll tell him about you. He'll come and see you then. P'raps you'll have a cross, too."
Jim smiled faintly, and stroked the small hand that lay in his palm, rather as he might have stroked a delicate rose petal that had floated to him from the sky. He could not talk; but it was a pleasure to lie and look at this beautiful child; and Rupert became all at once wonderfully communicative. He plainly took a strange and wayward liking to Jim, as children will do sometimes to the most unlikely people.
"I feel as though he belonged to me," he remarked later on in the living room, as the mid-day meal was going forward. "You see, he got me out of the water; and I fink my papa will take him for one of his soldiers, because he's so brave. I'm to be a soldier when I grow up. Perhaps I'll have Jim to be my orderly. Papa has an orderly, I know. I suppose he keeps his things tidy for him. I fink I'll have Jim for mine when he gets better. Why doesn't he get better quickly?"
"Because we can't get a doctor to him yet, little gentleman."
"My papa would send one if you'd ask him," said the child, in the same rather magnificent way. "He can send anybody anywhere, I know. He can do anything he likes. My papa is a very great man."
"And where does he live, dear?" asked Eileen breathlessly, realising for the first time that, though the words father and mother conveyed no impression to the child's mind, he had a very decided notion about his papa and mamma, although he had never spoken of them before to-day; but the question was beyond the child's power of answering. He looked perplexed for a moment, and then said—
"They're going home—we're all going home. They'll go home as soon as the big ship gets to land. I suppose they've gone home already," and then he looked about him with wide-open wondering eyes, filled with a vague distress and perplexity; and glancing up into Eileen's face, he asked—