He had come out of the experience a thousand times better than he had any right to hope, yet had he not involved an American girl in what must have been an extremely disagreeable and ungrateful task?
At this moment of her entrance into the invalid’s room Sally Ashton did not appear to have been seriously affected by her experience.
Her hour of working in the garden in the warm late winter sun had given her cheeks the color they frequently lacked, or else it was her embarrassment at meeting the young officer. Sally’s hair was also curling in the delicious and irresponsible fashion it often assumed, breaking into small rings on her forehead and at the back of her neck in the fashion of which she at least pretended to disapprove.
“Miss Patricia said you wished to speak to me. I am glad you are so much better,” she began in a reserved and ceremonious fashion as if she and the lieutenant had met on but one previous occasion before today.
In truth it seemed impossible to Sally that the French officer whom she was facing at present had been the ill and disheveled boy she had found in hiding at the château and nursed back to comparative health.
In announcing that Sally did not desire to see the young French officer again, Miss Patricia had been correct. Sally considered that she had made a grave and foolish mistake and preferred, as most of us do, that her mistake be ignored and forgotten.
Yet Lieutenant Fleury had no idea either of ignoring or forgetting Sally’s effort in his behalf.
Immediately in reply to her knock he had risen. His serious expression had now changed to one of boyish gratitude and good humor.
“Yes, I did wish to speak to you; you are kind to have come,” he returned, although in reality surprised by Sally’s extremely youthful appearance. He had only a confused memory of her face bending above him during his delirium. They had enjoyed but one conversation when he was entirely himself. On that occasion he had supposed his rescuer a young woman of some years and dignity, and Sally at present looked like a school girl. Indeed, she was a school girl when at home in her own part of the world if one can count college and school as one and the same thing.
After coming in from the garden this morning she had hastily changed her everyday Camp Fire dress for a white flannel of which she was especially fond, and without observing that the skirt had shrunk until it was extremely short.