Closing his eyes, he tried to think. His nurse was not a Spanish mulatto, as her dark dress suggested. It was more likely that she came from Louisiana, where the old French stock had not died out; but Dick felt puzzled. She had spoken, obviously with affection, of ma mignonne; but he was sure the singer was no child of hers. There was no Creole accent in that clear voice, and the steps he heard were light. The feet that had passed his door were small and arched; not flat like a negro’s. He had seen feet of the former kind slip on an iron staircase and brush, in pretty satin shoes, across a lawn on which the moonlight fell. Besides, a girl whose skin was fair and whose movements were strangely graceful had flitted about his room. While he puzzled over this he went to sleep and on waking saw with a start of pleasure Jake sitting near his bed. His nurse had gone.
“Hullo!” he said. “I’m glad you’ve come. There are a lot of things I want to know.”
“The trouble is I’ve been ordered not to tell you much. It’s a comfort to see you looking brighter.”
“I feel pretty well. But can you tell me where I am and how I got there?”
“Certainly. We’ll take the last question first. Somebody tore off a shutter and we carried you on it. I guess you know you got a dago’s knife between your ribs.”
“I seem to remember something like that,” said Dick; who added with awkward gratitude: “I believe the brutes would have killed me if you hadn’t been there.”
“It was a pretty near thing. Does it strike you as curious that while you made yourself responsible for me I had to take care of you?”
“You did so, anyhow,” Dick remarked with feeling. “But go on.”
“Somebody brought a Spanish doctor, who said you couldn’t be moved much and must be taken into the nearest house, so we brought you here.”
“Where is ‘here’? That’s what I want to know?”