There are no lice on us,
No lice on us.
There may be one or two
Great big fat lice on you,
No lice on us.”
Reuben Cowder read that to Dick with tears running down his cheeks.
“My little Nancy,” he said.
“She’s a brave lady,” said Dick.
The spring and summer came and went. The letters were unfailingly cheerful. They had settled down to work. With the end of the fighting and the conquest of typhus their life was more like that of a normal hospital. If primitive, it was sufficient. There was but one exciting episode. It came in one of the spring letters.
“A curious thing has happened, Father; one of the strange meetings this war is continually bringing about. A week ago an ox-cart drove in from the north with a Serbian wounded months ago—his leg had been amputated—sawed off. He had had no care in the winter. He had had typhus somewhere back in the mountains. Friendly peasants had tried to take care of him, but he was in a terrible shape—no flesh—just a spark of life left. They brought him finally to us—and we did our best of course. It’s strange what a fury to save seizes you when a poor shattered thing like this is put into your hands. You fight and fight—and won’t give in, and we won with this man, but I don’t believe we would if he had not been so determined to live. He whispered it to one of the girls, speaking for the first time days after he came, whispered in perfectly good English, ‘I must live.’ She almost turned his broth over him she was so surprised. It was strange to us to find one like that. Most of them are so done they don’t help—just lie staring, waiting to die, and only asking not to be touched. I have seen my dogs look at me as they do when they were dying. Their eyes always beg that you let them die in peace.