His commanding officer, who had accompanied him to the hospital, had taken me aside, before I entered the room, and had told me privately his views about the boy.
"You look tired," I remarked, as I noted the weary droop of the head.
He smiled quickly as he looked up and said: "Done up, I think. Those six months in Malta were a bit too much for me."
"But you have been home before coming to France, have you not?" I asked him.
"Home!" he cried in surprise. "No such luck! We had expected a week or two in England after our return, but it's off. There were four thousand of us in Malta, but we're all here now, at Etaples, and liable to be sent to the trenches any moment. When I stood on the cliffs at Wimereux yesterday and saw the dear old shores across the Channel—" He stopped suddenly, overpowered by some strong emotion. "I'd be a better soldier farther off. Between homesickness and the pain in my chest, I'm about all in."
He did look tired and faint, and even the pink rays of the setting sun failed to tint the pallor of his cheeks. I told him I would send the orderly to help him undress and that he must get into bed at once.
When I returned shortly and examined his chest, I found that he was suffering from a touch of pleurisy; there were, too, traces of more serious trouble in the lungs.
"What do you think of me, Major?" he enquired with a quizzical smile, when I had completed the examination. "Anything interesting inside?"
"Interesting enough to call for a long rest," I replied. "We'll have to keep you here a while and later send you home to England."
"My O.C., who by the way is my uncle too, and a medical man, insisted on my coming here," he remarked. "He says I'm not strong enough for trench life. But the old boy—bless his heart!—loves me like a son, and I'm morally certain he wants to pack me off for fear I'll get killed. I simply can't go home, you know, until I've done my bit. It would be jolly weak of me, wouldn't it?"