He seemed to understand what she was saying, as one understands that shade is cool after the broiling torment of the sun.
"Luck will always come at your command, Mary!" he whispered, repeating his last words when he left the Ewold garden to go to the wars.
"And she wants you to rest—just rest—and not worry!"
This had the effect of a soothing draught. Smilingly he fell back on the pillow and slept.
"You put some spirit into that!" said the doctor, after he and Mary had tiptoed out of the room; "a little of the spirit in keeping with a dark-eyed girl who lives in the land of the Eternal Painter."
"All I had!" answered Mary, with simple earnestness.
At noon Jack was still sleeping. He slept on through the last hours of the day.
"The first long stretch he has had," ran the bulletin, from tongue to tongue, "and real sleep, too—the kind that counts!"
In the late afternoon, when the coolness and the shadows of evening were creeping in at the doors and windows, the doctor, Peter Mortimer, the father, and Firio were on the veranda, while Mrs. Galway was on watch by the bedside.
"He's waking!" she came out to whisper.