“Of course he is,” assured a mild voice from the foot of the cot, “but you must come away and give him a chance to sleep.”
“Sleep! With all that roar outside?”
“Perhaps, my boy, the surgeon gave him something that would tend to quiet him. You must calm yourself, and remember that you have your duty with me. He did his duty without fear or question. Are you less a man than your brother?”
The nurse well knew how to manage in a case of this kind. She had tested the metal of a proud young spirit, in the full belief that it would ring true.
“Come along now,” she gently urged. “Let me show you that thought of self does not fit here.”
They stood at the cot side of a mortally wounded Belgian soldier.
“We found a letter in his pocket,” softly voiced the nurse, “saying that he was enclosing a pair of shoes for his three-year-old baby with the money he had earned as a scout in King Albert’s army. Here are the little shoes,” lying on the covering sheet.
Billy felt like he was choking, and Henri simply lifted the border of the nurse’s apron to his lips.
It was several days before Henri obtained permission to talk with his brother. There was so much to talk about that the few minutes allowed were as so many seconds.
“But I’ve news from mother!” confided Henri to Billy—“she was all right when Francois last saw her in Paris, and she got the word I sent her about my going to the château, and why I was going. It was Francois who wrote me about the gold and jewels being left behind. Mother tried to get word to me not to take the risk; she said that more than all else she wanted me to come straight to her if I could. It makes me ashamed to see Jules and Francois under the colors and I without, but I’ve made up my mind to do this thing I have set out to do, and I’ll stick until it is finished.”