"He had better stay here," continued the doctor. "Moving him might rouse the poor girl, and there's no need for that as yet. By the way, who is to tell her? There isn't a lady or a parson in the place."
"I suppose I must," returned Philip after a pause. "I think it might be best, since she confided her trouble to me. But couldn't I get some sort of a woman from barracks just to stay with her?"
"Right; you're a thoughtful fellow, Marsden. Take my buggy and go to the sergeant-major; his wife will know of some one. I'll stay till you return in case she wakes; and look here, as you pass send a man about the coffin. The funeral must be this evening, and--"
Philip Marsden fled from the dreary details of death with a remark that the doctor could send a messenger. He was no coward, yet he felt glad to escape into the level beams of the rising sun. As he drove down along the staring white roads he asked himself more than once why he had interfered to save a girl he scarcely knew from the knowledge of her father's dishonour; and if he could find no sufficient reason for it he could find no regret either. It had been an impulse, and it was over. He had kept his word to Dick, and done his best to drive care from those clear eyes,--what beautiful eyes they were!
"Och then!" cried Mrs. O'Grady, the sergeant-major's wife, who, hastily roused from her slumbers, came out into the verandah in scanty attire, "and is the swate young leddy alone? It's meself wud go at wanst but that I'm a Holy Roman, surr, and shud be talkin' of the blessed saints in glory. An' that's not the thing wid a Prothestant in his coffin."
Despite his anxiety her hearer could not repress a smile. "I don't set so much store by religious consolation, Mrs. O'Grady. It's more a kind, motherly person I want."
"Then, Tim!" cried the good lady, appealing to her spouse who had appeared in shirt and trousers, "Mrs. Flanigan wud be the woman, but that she's daily expectin' her tinth--"
"Isn't there some kindly person who's seen trouble?" hastily interrupted the Major.
"Ah, if it's the throuble you're wantin', take little Mrs. Vickary. A Baptist and a widder,--more by token twice; bore with two dhrunken bastes, Major, like a blissed angel, and wud be ready to spake up for anny one."
Major Marsden, with a recollection of Widow Vickary's sad face as nurse by a comrade's sick bed, pleaded for a younger and brighter one. Thereupon the serjeant-major suggested poor Healy's Mary Ann, but his wife tossed her head. "What the men see in that gurrll, surr, I can't say; but she'll go, and cheerful, wid her little boy; a swate little boy, surr, like thim cherubs with a trumpet--for her father she come to live wid died of the fayver a month gone, and her man is waiting to be killed by thim Afghans somewhere."