"Very glad to meet a brother in arms," said the pseudo-Captain, in an assumed bass, taking up his cane and giving a slight punch to the Colonel, who seemed pre-occupied.
"Oh! ah! yes, very glad, to be sure," answered the Colonel, who scarcely knew whether he was talking English or Choctaw at that moment. Then partially recovering himself and remembering that something in the shape of conversation must be carried on, he said: "Very pretty girl that—cousin of yours, didn't they say, Captain? What is her name?"
"Eh?" said the Captain. "Oh, my cousin yonder? yes, Miss Harris, Miss Joe Harris—daughter of Mrs. Harris." It is supposed that in the latter name he alluded to a somewhat doubtful character of Charles Dickens. "Devil of a girl, Colonel, I tell you!"
"Ah, what do you mean?" asked the Colonel.
"Mean? why I mean that when I came home two or three days ago, she seemed rather glad than otherwise to see that I had been cut up. Stuck her finger in my eye, or rather in the place where my eye had been, to see whether they had made a clean operation of it, and nearly broke that bone of my left arm again, trying to discover whether they had set it entirely straight. Said I must have been a splendid subject in the hospital. Devil of a girl—going into one of the hospitals to nurse, directly. Says that she is never happy except she has a few broken limbs, and smashed heads, and gunshot wounds through the body, and holes made by Minie bullets, under her especial care."
"Horrible!" gasped the Colonel, who could no longer sit silent under such a revelation of female character.
"Yes, it is a little horrible, but a fact, though!" said the Captain. "Devil of a girl, I tell you! I believe that she would just as lieve see my head amputated as not, provided she could stand by and witness a 'beautiful operation.'"
"I say this is dreadful!" said the Colonel.
"Dreadful, of course," said the Captain. "Still, nothing when you once get used to it. Plenty of women just like her—all female devils, though they manage to conceal the fact, sometimes, until they get a man under their thumbs, especially for the purpose of practising on him. But we want women who have some nerve, for these bloody times. Don't you think so, Colonel?"
"Yes—I can't say—that is, really I don't know!" answered the Colonel, who did not at that particular moment, know much else than that he was a little sick at the stomach and that the whole world seemed to be a kind of hideous mockery.