From the farther door there entered a man, limping on crutches improvised from the limbs of a tree. Stained bandages were about one arm and another leg. His head, too, was wrapped so that only half his face showed. A hurrying orderly met him.
"You can't come in here!" he cried.
"Why not, I'd like to know. Ain't this the horspital?"
"Of course it is."
"Then why can't I come in here. I'm hurt, and hurt bad, pardner. Shot through leg and arm, and part of my jaw gone. Why can't I come in?"
"'Cause you can't. Didn't we just carry you out for dead? What'll the audience think if they see you walking again? Git on out of here!"
"I will not! I've wrapped this bandage around my head on purpose so they won't know me. Let me come in, will you? That's real lemonade them pretty nurses is givin' out to drink, and I'm as dry as a fish. I've been firin' one of them guns until I've swallowed enough smoke to play an animated cannon ball. Let me in the horspital."
"Yes, let him in!" called Mr. Pertell through his megaphone. He was at the far end of the shack that had been hastily erected on Oak Farm as a hospital, for the last big scenes of the war play, "A Girl in Blue and A Girl in Gray."
"All right, just as you say," answered the orderly. "Come on in, Bill. Are you going to die this time?"
"I am not! I'm going to be one of them converts, and get chicken sandwiches and jelly."