“Bah! Nonsense, sir! She don’t mind. Why, as she said to me just now, she wouldn’t have got a wound from an Indian’s arrow if she had stopped at home, but the knife might have slipped, and she might have cut herself, or upset a pot of boiling water over her, or failed down the cellar steps and broken a dish and run a piece into her side.”
“Well, that’s good philosophy, Morgan, and very comforting to me. What do you say, George, are you sorry you came?”
“No, father, not at all,” I replied, for unwittingly I had finished the big slice of bread, and felt all the better for the food. “I only wish I were a man, and could fight.”
“Don’t wish that, my lad,” he said quickly. “There is nothing more glorious in life than being a boy. But there, I have no time to waste in preaching to you about that,” he said, laughing. “It would be labour thrown away. No boy can believe it. He has to grow into a man, and look back: then he does. There, don’t worry yourself till your leg is better, but do any little thing to be useful, and if an attack is made, keep with Morgan. You can load.”
“Yes, I can load,” I said to myself, as I limped off with Pomp following me, looking very proud of his hand being in a sling, and we went into the part of the block-house where poor Sarah was lying.
As I crossed the enclosure I seemed to understand now why it had been contrived as it was to form an outer defence, which, if taken, only meant that the enemy had a more formidable place to attack, for the block-house seemed to my inexperienced eyes to be impregnable.
As I quietly entered the place, I encountered the doctor.
“Ha!” he said; “come to see me?”
I explained that I had come to see our housekeeper.
“Asleep,” he said. “Don’t disturb her. Let’s have a look at your wound.”