"Only a flesh wound—nothing of any importance. He must lie up for a day or two.—Shall I go across to the hospital with you, Miss Hunt?"
"No, thank you," replied Katherine; "Kitty and I can manage nicely alone.—Now, Kitty," she said, as the girls went down the street, "you must remember that Sister Mollie knows nothing of your arrival here. She will be very much astonished when you walk into the ward, and perhaps a little hurt with you for keeping things dark from her."
"I shall like to see her," replied Kitty; "and if she is nursing Gavon, I of course will help her. It is my place to nurse him, is it not, Katherine?"
"I should say yes. I am glad you feel it in that way."
Katherine could not help a note of sarcasm coming into her voice.
She and Kitty entered the hospital. A moment later they found themselves in the long ward. Kitty's face turned white. Had she thought of herself, she might have fainted; but just then her eyes were arrested by seeing a girl bending over a sick man, holding a stimulant to his lips, and speaking cheering words. The girl was her sister; the man she was bending over was Captain Keith.
With a cry—a curious mingling of delight, and suffering, and absolute self-forgetfulness—Kitty, in her white dress and blue sash, looking something like a fashionable London girl and also something like an angel, ran down the long ward and approached the side of the sick man.
"Gavon," she said, "Gavon, I am here! I have come.—Mollie, I have come—Kitty has come."
Mollie Hepworth had often said that nothing could ever take her by surprise—that she was, owing to her education, and perhaps also to her temperament, prepared for any emergency—but she was sorely tested at the present moment. Her first wild thought was that Kitty was dead, and that this was her wraith come to visit the sick ward in the beleaguered town of Ladysmith; but one glance at Kitty showed her that it was a very living girl with whom she had to deal. She stifled the inclination to cry out; she showed no surprise, and putting her finger to her lips, gave a warning glance at the excited girl.
"He is very weak from loss of blood," she said; "don't startle him."