“Look here, I don’t want to hear any scandal, Jerry. There, that will do! I’ll give you a shilling as soon as I have one.”
“Thank ye; but don’t. Keep it saved up for me, till I can say sir to you proper. When are you going to begin?”
The coming of the hospital attendant with Dick’s dinner interrupted the conversation; and that afternoon, as he sat by the open window, with the bouquet of flowers before him and a book, there was a rustling of silk on the stairs—loud, heavy steps, quiet and light steps as well—and directly after the door was opened, and Lacey, looking proud and happy, ushered Miss Deane into the room.
Chapter Thirty Two.
A startling Fact.
That event was the turning-point in Dick Smithson’s long illness; and the words said to him by Anna Deane at her visit convinced him that there was something worth living for, even if it was only to have won the respect and friendship of the lady whom he judged now to be the lieutenant’s betrothed.
“I knew it,” Jerry said, with a good, open smile, as he was finishing Dick’s toilet. “Nobody knows till they try it what virtue there is in a shampoo.”
That was some few days later, when the lieutenant’s servant had gone to the hospital, as usual, to see how the patient was getting on, and if anything could be done.