And if the doctor's pronouns were a little mixed he himself understood what he meant, and nobody else had anything to do with the matter.
The next morning Tode awoke again and this time to a full and lively consciousness of his surroundings. It was still early and the nurse was dozing in an easy-chair beside the bed. The boy looked at her curiously, then he raised himself on his elbow and gazed about him, but as he did so he became conscious of a dull throbbing pain in one side of his head and a sick faintness swept over him. It was his first experience of weakness, and it startled him into a faint groan as his head fell back on the pillow.
The sound awoke the nurse, who held a spoonful of medicine to his lips, saying,
"Lie still. The doctor says you must not talk at all until he comes."
"So," thought the boy. "I've got a doctor. Wonder where I am an' what ails me, anyhow."
But that strange weakness made it easy to obey orders and lie still while the nurse bathed his face and hands and freshened up the bed and the room. Then she brought him a bowl of chicken broth with which she fed him. It tasted delicious, and he swallowed it hungrily and wished there had been more. Then as he lay back on the pillows he remembered all that had happened--the horses running down the street, his attempt to stop them, and the awful blow on his head as it struck the curbstone.
"Wonder where I am? Tain't a hospital, anyhow," he thought. "My! But I feel nice an' clean an' so--so light, somehow! If only my head wasn't so sore!"
No wonder he felt "nice and clean and light somehow," when, for the first time in his life his body and garments as well as his bed, were as sweet and fresh as hands could make them. Tode never had minded dirt. Why should he, when he had been born in it and had grown up knowing nothing better? Yet, none the less, was this new experience most delightful to him--so delightful that he didn't care to talk. It was happiness enough for him, just then, to lie still and enjoy these new conditions, and so presently he floated off again into sleep--a sleep full of beautiful dreams from which the low murmur of voices aroused him, and he opened his eyes to see the nurse and the doctor looking down at him.
"Well, my boy," said the doctor, with his fingers on the wrist near him, "you look better. Feel better too, don't you?"
Tode gazed at him, wondering who he was and paying no attention to his question.