"Why, you-'re-not-much-bigger-'an-a-bean!"
"Still, I am large enough to take care of you and send you back to your regiment if you are reasonable: but no one can do anything for you if you fly into a rage in this way!"
"Yes! and you know that, and you put me in a rage going after them other fellows. You know I've got the best right to you. I claimed you soon as you come in the door, and called you afore you got half down the ward. You said you'd take care of me and now you don't do it. The surgeon give me to you too. You know I can't live if you don't save me, and you don't care if I die!"
I was penitent and conciliatory, and promised to be good, when he said doggedly:
"Yes! and I'll call you Mary!"
"Very well, Mary is a good name—it was my mother's, and I shall no doubt come to like it."
"I guess it is a good name! It was my mother's name too, and any woman might be glad to be called Mary. But I never did see a woman 'at had any sense!"
He soon growled himself to sleep, and from that time I called him "Ursa Major;" but he only slept about half an hour, when a nurse in great fright summoned me. They had lifted him and he had fainted.
I helped to put him back into bed, and bathed him until consciousness returned, when he grasped my wrist with a vice-like hold and groaned.
"Oh God! Oh mother! Is this death?"