She poured her last drop into his parched mouth and hurried off for more. She was detained by the way, and, when she returned, fancied he was asleep, but soon discovered that he had fainted quietly away, utterly spent with two days of hunger, suffering, and exposure. He was himself again directly, and lay contentedly looking up at her as she fed him with hot soup, longing to talk, but refusing to listen to a word till he was refreshed.
“That’s very nice,” he said gratefully, as he finished, adding with a pathetic sort of gayety, as he groped about with his one hand: “I don’t expect napkins, but I should like a handkerchief. They took my coat off when they did my arm, and the gentleman who kindly lent me this doesn’t seem to have possessed such an article.”
Christie wiped his lips with the clean towel at her side, and smiled as she did it, at the idea of Mr. Fletcher’s praising burnt soup, and her feeding him like a baby out of a tin cup.
“I think it would comfort you if I washed your face: can you bear to have it done?” she asked.
“If you can bear to do it,” he answered, with an apologetic look, evidently troubled at receiving such services from her.
Yet as her hands moved gently about his face, he shut his eyes, and there was a little quiver of the lips now and then, as if he was remembering a time when he had hoped to have her near him in a tenderer capacity than that of nurse. She guessed the thought, and tried to banish it by saying cheerfully as she finished:
“There, you look more like yourself after that. Now the hands.”
“Fortunately for you, there is but one,” and he rather reluctantly surrendered a very dirty member.
“Forgive me, I forgot. It is a brave hand, and I am proud to wash it!”
“How do you know that?” he asked, surprised at her little burst of enthusiasm, for as she spoke she pressed the grimy hand in both her own.