“Blow, Jonesy, before your beans get cold,” suggested Joe.
At this low remark, Mr. Jones straightened up to his full height very suddenly and stepped backwards with dignity. Unhappily, his heel hooked against the leg of his chair and twisted the piece of furniture beneath him so that, tripping, he lost his balance upon the waxed floor. Simultaneously, Mr. Jones lost his dignity and waved his arms wildly in a frantic endeavor to recover himself.
“Come on,” Kelly urged again.
Mr. Jones obeyed the words of his trainer literally. Coming on over the chair, he landed with a crash between the beds on the other side of the aisle.
“Bring the ambulance up here,” suggested a facetious patient.
Sore in mind and body, Mr. Jones was assisted to his feet by the helpful Miss Knight. “I stumbled,” he explained to her in excuse.
“It’s a darn good thing you didn’t fall,” replied the nurse with ill-concealed sarcasm.
Virginia had watched Mr. Jones’s acrobatic performances with mixed emotions. She glanced at her wrist watch and, rising, leaned over to bid Joe farewell.
He caught her hand and held it. For a moment the black eyes were gazing squarely into the depths of the blue ones, and no word passed between the two, yet they were filled with a new, strange joyousness.
“I must go,” she whispered gently, and pulled her hand from Joe’s as she turned towards the stricken Mr. Jones. “I hope you are not hurt,” she told him and left the ward with a nod at Kelly at the door.