“Home!” echoed Jim, his eyes shining.
“What makes you look so sober?” Miss Laura asked him as they drove away. “You aren’t sorry to leave the hospital?”
“Sorry?” Jim gave a shaky little laugh, then suddenly was grave again. “Yes, I’m sorry, but it’s for all the other fellows that nobody’s coming for,” he explained.
“I wish I could have taken them all home with us,” Laura answered quickly. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Jim. If you’ll get well very fast, maybe you and I can give a little Christmas party in your ward, to those other boys who have to stay there.”
“Hang up stockin’s an’—an’ a tree an’ all?” Jim questioned breathlessly.
“Yes. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“Gee!” was Jim’s rapturous comment. “You bet I’ll get well fast—if I can,” the afterthought in a lower tone.
The room Laura had prepared for the boy had been a nursery, and had a frieze, representing in gay colours the old Mother Goose stories. Jim was put on a cot beside the open fire, where he lay very still, but it was not the dull hopeless stillness of the hospital. Now he was resting, and his eyes travelled happily along the wall as he picked out the old familiar characters.
“Makes me feel like a little kid—seeing all those,” he said, pointing at them.
The thin white face and small figure under the bedclothes looked like a very “little kid” still, Laura thought. The gray eyes swept over the large sunny room and then back to Miss Laura’s face, and suddenly Jim’s lips trembled.