I have known McAndrew for seven years now, and I understand his vernacular. We met in that great rendezvous of all time, the Western Front, on a day when I took command of a Field Ambulance in which McAndrew was functioning as a stretcher-bearer. When our unit was demobilized in Nineteen Nineteen, McAndrew came before me and announced that he had relinquished all intention of resuming his former profession of "jiner" in his native Dumbarton, and desired henceforth to serve me in the capacity mentioned above for the joint term of our natural lives. I took him on, and he does very well. He has his own ideas about how to wait at table, and his methods with unauthenticated callers are apt to be arbitrary; but he is clean and honest, and—well, he wears a vertical gold stripe on his left sleeve and three ribbons just above his watch-pocket. That is enough for me.
As I say, his vernacular now contains no mysteries for me. So when he made the alarming announcement just mentioned I realized at once that no case of infant mortality had occurred on my premises, but that a person of small stature desired an interview.
"Man or woman?" I asked.
"A lassie."
"A patient?"
"I couldna say: she wouldna tell me," replied McAndrew, not without bitterness.
"Bring her in," I said. Forthwith the Ancient Mariner was ushered into my presence.
"Grampa's in bed with one of his legs again," she announced.
I forbore to ask an obvious and fatuous question, and nodded.
"Dr. Wiseman used to attend him," continued my visitor; "but he didn't charge him very much—next to nothink, almost," she added, with a shade of anxiety.