Chapter Thirteen.
A Bit Queer.
“Tell us all about it,” said Bracy as he lay partially dressed outside his simple charpoy bed in the small room Doctor Morton had annexed for his officer patients.
“All about what?” said Roberts, who had come in, according to his daily custom, to sit for a while and cheer up his suffering friend.
“All about what? All about everything that has been going on—is going on.”
“And is going to go on!” said Roberts, laughing. “That’s a large order, old chap.”
“You may laugh,” said Bracy dolefully; “but you don’t know what it is to be lying here staring at the sky.”
“And mountains.”
“Pah! Well, at the mountains too, day after day, in this wearisome way. I hear the bugle and the firing, and sometimes a shout or two, and then I lie wondering what everything means—whether we’re driving them away or being beaten, and no one to tell me anything but that dreadful woman; for old Morton thinks of nothing but sword-cuts and bullet-wounds, and will only talk of one’s temperature or one’s tongue. I tell you it’s maddening when one wants to be up and doing something.”
“Patience, patience, old man. You’re getting better fast.”