“Well, of course, I may be quite in error,” candidly admitted the other. “We will ask a doctor.”
So Doctor MacBean was called in, and he made an examination of the accused limb.
“Dear, dear!” he said, “however were you passed for the army? The scarsal bone of the fons ilium is all out of drawing.”
“But you won’t tell, doctor?” pleaded poor Green; “it does not inconvenience me in the least, I assure you.”
“Not now, perhaps,” said the doctor, nodding his head; “but after a long march in sand, it might be serious. I am very sorry, but I must do my duty.”
But, being much entreated, the doctor was persuaded to try what an invention of his own, which he spoke diffidently of, would do. So Green’s leg was done up in splints for twenty-four hours, and then plaistered up. And after a bit the doctor saw so much improvement that he agreed to say nothing about it, and so Green sailed with the rest.
“How is your fons ilium, Green?” he was asked that evening in the saloon.
“Hush!” he whispered, anxiously; “the colonel will hear you! I am all right. I’ll walk you ten miles through the deepest sand we meet with for a sovereign.”
“Thank you; no amount of sovereigns would tempt me to accept the responsibility of putting your scarsal bone to so severe a test. But I am glad it is so much stronger; very glad. I would not have the regiment miss the aid of your stalwart arm on any consideration. Never shall I forget the way you delivered that Number 3 cut which caught Mercer such a hot one the other day, when you were playing singlestick on the deck. I say, by-the-by, have you had your sword sharpened?”
“Yes!” replied Green, with enthusiasm. “It has a good butcher’s-knife edge upon it; so the corporal said, who ground it for me. It is quite as sharp as my pocket-knife.”