“Goodness!” said Zaidos. “I didn’t think Tony was as sick as all that! I would have to be a good deal worse than he looks to be so sick I couldn’t hold your hand!”
“Silly!” said Helen, blushing. “If you will attend with the gravity the occasion requires, I will explain things to you. Perhaps Tony has been able to hold my hand a little; but he was not strong enough to hold it very hard. Now, however, he is growing better fast. On the other hand, the doctors say I am worn out. I don’t think so myself. I think they are making it up, the dears, so I can honorably go home with Tony. But be that as it may, I am going home. We are going to be married a week from tomorrow, John, dear, and then in a few days I will begin to move my dear Tony by slow stages homeward. And I want you to come with us.”
“Me on a honeymoon trip? Well, I think not!” Zaidos exploded. “Nay, nay, pretty lady, you won’t get me to chaperone you!”
“Now, John!” cried Helen. “Oh, I could shake you! What will I do crossing Europe with a sick man on a cot, unless someone comes to help me? I didn’t think you were so ungallant!”
Zaidos stared at her. “That’s another way to look at it,” he said. “Of course I will go with you, and glad enough to do it. I never thought of that, Helen. Of course you could not go alone! Why can’t I get up and go talk things over with Tony? You can’t yell that sort of conversation the whole length of a ward.”
“You are to be allowed to get up tomorrow,” said Helen, “and, oh, John, please get well fast, because really I don’t see how we can go without you. No one else can be spared, and I want to go home. I want to see my father and mother. Just think of it, I will have to be married all alone. Not one of my own people to give me away, and kiss me, and say, ‘God bless you.’ I suppose I am an ungrateful girl. I ought to be thinking only that I have Tony, and how happy I am; but you know after all, John, a girl’s wedding day is a wonderful time. It is all so different to what we had planned. At home, we would have had the service in our own dear church, trimmed by all the little girls in the parish. And everyone would be there. The church would not hold them; the churchyard would be full of beaming faces, everybody bobbing and curtsying and wishing us good luck. And if I felt that I must shed a few happy tears, my mother’s shoulder would be near.”
“Do you have to cry?” asked Zaidos.
“Why, I don’t suppose one has to,” said Helen musingly, “but generally you do.”
“That’s awful,” said Zaidos dismally, and then repeated, “Awful! However, I don’t know the first thing about girls, and of course you do. If you must cry on somebody, why, you must; and you can use me, if you like.”