Miss Julia caught the tone of voice on the instant, and looked upward again from where she knelt beside the Colonel, with a swift smile.
"Why, it's Mr. Ransom, I do believe!" she exclaimed. "I should never have known you with your beard. It's so good of you to take this trouble—you always were so obliging! Any one will tell you where Dr. Willoughby is. He's the surgeon of the Eighteenth, you know. I'm sure he'll come at once—to please me—and time is so precious, you know!"
Without further words, Dwight moved off slowly and unsteadily toward the house.
Miss Parmalee, seating herself so that some of her mouse-tinted draperies almost touched the face of Dwight's companion, unhooked a fan from her girdle and began softly fanning Colonel Star buck. "The doctor won't be long," she said, in low, cooing tones, after a little; "do you feel easier now?"
"I am rather dizzy still, and a little faint," replied the Colonel, languorously. "That fanning is so delicious though, that I'm really very happy. At least I would be if I weren't nervous about you. You have been through such tremendous exertions all day—out in the sun, amid all these horrid sights and this infernal roar—without a parasol, too. Are you quite sure it has not been too much for you?"
"You are always so thoughtful of others, dear Colonel Starbuck," murmured Miss Julia, reducing the fanning to a gentle, measured movement, and fixing her lustrous eyes pensively upon the clouds above the horizon. "You never think of yourself!"
"Only to think how happy my fate is, to be rescued and nursed by an angel," sighed the Colonel.
A smile of gentle deprecation played upon Miss Julia's red lips, and imparted to her eyes the expression they would wear if they had been gazing upon a tenderly entrancing vision in the sky. Then, all at once; she gave a little start of aroused attention, looked puzzled, and after a moment's pause bent her head over close to the Colonel's.
"The man behind me has taken tight hold of my dress," she whispered, hurriedly. "I don't want to turn around, but can you see him? He isn't having a fit or anything, is he?"