“I’ve been thinking you’d get to this spot pretty soon. Some beef tea, nurse, and make it good and strong. We’ve got to get this fellow on his feet pretty quick for I can see he’s about done lying in bed.”
Then the wounds came in for attention, and Ruth stood bravely and watched, quivering in her heart over the sight, yet never flinching in her outward calm.
When the dressing of the wounds was over the doctor stood back and surveyed his patient:
“Well, you’re in pretty good shape now, and if you keep on you can leave here in about a week. Thank fortune there isn’t any more front to go back to! But now, if you don’t mind I’d like to know what’s made this marvellous change in you?”
The light broke out on Cameron’s face anew. He looked at the doctor smiling, and then he looked at Ruth, and reached out his hand to get hers:
“You see,” he said, “I—we—Miss Macdonald’s from my home town and——”
“I see,” said the doctor looking quizzically from one happy face to the other, “but hasn’t she always been from your home town?”
Cameron twinkled with his old Irish grin:
“Always,” he said solemnly, “but, you see, she hasn’t always been here.”
“I see,” said the doctor again looking quizzically into the sweet face of the girl, and doing reverence to her pure beauty with his gaze. “I congratulate you, corporal,” he said, and then turning to Ruth he said earnestly: “And you, too, Madame. He is a man if there ever was one.”