“Look! Look! He’s Captain Darling--captain of my brother’s company,” panted Sara to her companions.
Captain Darling did a strange thing--a thing which brought the girls’ hearts skipping into their throats--almost with an hysterical impulse to titter--like the light spray on the deep, deep wave when it bursts overwhelmingly.
He strode over to where the sufferer’s gas-mask lay upon the yellow grass--the chlorine-fooler which had failed to fool--put his hand into the breast-satchel attached to it, pulled out and held up--a few burnt matches.
“Ha! I thought so. This--this exonerates the sergeant. No doubt he did make a thorough inspection! Contrary to orders, the man carried matches in his satchel with his mask. The heat down there, on the threshold of the smoke-cloud, ignited them after he entered the trench--they’re warm still. They injured the mask--burned a tiny hole in the face-piece; see!”
The captain held up the goggle-eyed mask, with its brown face-piece, its white celluloid nose-clip and flutter-valve, through which a soldier’s breath and saliva escaped together. Surely enough, there was a tiny, blackened hole, no bigger than a pin’s head, piercing the rubber of that khaki-colored face-piece!
“Oh! Oh! In spite of all this, I’m glad we came to-day. I hardly realized before how much a man’s life in this terrible war depends upon his gas-mask--upon the disinfectants in his satchel through which he breathes! ‘A few peach-stones may save a soldier’s life!’ Didn’t seem possible! But ’twill make the work we girls are asked to do in war-time seem so--so--different!”
The outburst--low and tearful--came from Arline, a rain-streak, not a rainbow, now!
But Sara Davenport was beyond speech. A fiery hand clasped the back of her neck as she glanced from her officer-brother, fiercely biting his lip while he contemplated the charred match-ends, to the “skinned” sergeant--completely vindicated.
“O dear! Iver will feel now that he’s made a fool of himself, that he’s the blighter, for--for going on the storm-path and fiercely scolding that sergeant before he knew that he was to blame,” thought the fiery little sister. “Just--like--me! How often I feel that way after bursting like a hot pepper!... Iver says himself that he has a ‘whiz-bang’ temper, but it’s too bad that he should be caught discharging ‘whiz-bangs’ before Olive. He worships Olive. I guess when he goes over--as he will, oh-h! so soon--when he’s lonely or homesick, lying out in some horrid shell-hole, or rooted in trench-mud until he feels himself sprouting, he’ll be thinking of her, probably as she is now, kneeling by a gassed soldier--true Minute-Girl--no more the Olive Deering that she was when I first knew her, two years ago, than--than.... Oh, for pity’s sake! There--there’s that ‘Old Perfect’ with the muff and skin and shoulders again. I wonder if she heard him pitching into the sergeant, too. Couldn’t! She was too far off. But she’s smiling at those miserable match-ends. What--what an iceberg! If we had her in camp this summer, we wouldn’t need any underground refrigerator.... Ugh! I’d like--to--bite--her!” From which it may be inferred that the little sister was right in her self-arraignment; that there was more than one temper of the whiz-bang order, a flame at this moment upon the sear skirts of Gas Valley.
But there was no flame under the snow-light smile which shed a peculiar whiteness over the face of the detached visitor to camp. Perhaps she was conscious of its frigidity herself, for, curiously enough, she plucked at the corner of her mouth with her right hand, momentarily withdrawn from the feather muff.