Once again there were tears in her eyes. She was learning much of this strange man who looked on death so lightly, yet spent himself in striving to evade it.
It was a busy time again after Balaklava; she had barely time to think, scarcely time to rest. Yet ever and always, when her mind travelled beyond the immediate present, those words with which Dr. Forsyth had replied to her story came back to remembrance--
"People who play Providence ought not to wonder."
Was he right, she wondered, and then was ashamed of her own wondering.
"You will have to rest a little more," said the doctor to her one day when she had been helping him. "You were quite wobbly just now. You will be of no use, you know, unless you pull yourself together." And he narrowed his eyes perplexedly. "You are not living in the present somehow--you're reaching out to the future. Why?"
She laughed.
"Why should I--what can the future hold for me! I will take a blue pill."
He grunted dissatisfaction, but was too busy to say more. Yet what he said was true. She began to catch herself wondering, wondering. The present was all-engrossing, of course; how could it be anything else when she could do what she could do for the poor lads?--his poor lads, who were so brave, so cheery. And then her mind would become vagrant, and she would wake up from dreams with a start.
It was one day just before Inkerman, the 10th of November, that Dr. Forsyth came to her and said:
"I want you. It's over at the cavalry hospital."