“What!” cried the doctor. “Why, if it hadn’t been for me you’d have had no faces at all worth looking at. Most likely— There, there, there! I won’t get into a temper with you both, and tell you what might have happened.”
“Both would have died, and a good job too,” cried Denham bitterly.
“Come, come!” said the doctor gently; “don’t talk like that. I know, I know. It has been very hard to bear, and you both have been rather slow at getting strong again. But be reasonable. This hasn’t been a proper hospital, and it isn’t now a convalescent home, where I could coax you both back into health and strength. I’ve no appliances or medicines worth speaking about, and I must confess that the diet upon which I am trying to feed you up is not perfect.”
“Perfect, Val!” cried Denham. “Just listen to him. Everything is horrible.”
“Quite right, my dear boy,” said the doctor; “it is.”
“The bread— Ugh! It always tastes of burnt bones and skin and grease.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, with a sigh; “but that’s all the fuel we have for heating the oven now the wagons are burned.”
“Then the soup, or beef-tea, or whatever you call it. I don’t know which is worst—that which is boiled up in a pannikin or the nauseous mess made by soaking raw beef in a bucket of water.”
“But it is warmed afterwards, my dear boy,” said the doctor, “and it is extremely nutritious.”
“Ugh!” shuddered Denham. “What stuff for a poor fellow recovering from wounds! I can’t and I won’t take any more of it.”