Dick Lester of Kurrajong

by Mary Grant Bruce

"You've got to look sharp and well, you know, Lester," he had said, at parting. "We want all our men badly; the Wesley and Scotch juniors are going to take a heap of beating next term!" Which had left Dick speechless, yet glowing. He astonished the nurse that evening by demanding two eggs for tea!

Neil Fraser had brought his mother this afternoon—a sweet-faced old lady, who sat beaming alternately on her tall son, and on the "case" that had already made his name a household word among surgeons. And John Lester leaned against the balcony rail, smoking, and looking contentedly at his son.

Dick's feet were very uncertain still. He had discarded crutches after a few days' use, declaring that they hurt him more than they helped him. Then he had hobbled, with a stick or between two helpers; only the day before had he suddenly declared that he would walk alone—and had walked! A few steps, at first, from his couch to his mother; subsiding on her, flushed and laughing, while she caught him to her and held him, as she had done when, twelve years before, his baby feet had first carried him to her across the nursery floor. She remembered yet the pride of that long ago day. It was a small thing beside the utter thankfulness of this.

The hospital was keenly interested in Dick's convalescence. It was not often that they had a patient so doggedly determined to get well. He demanded instructions as to working his muscles, and struggled with them as soon as he was permitted, rubbing himself, moving limbs that no longer seemed to belong to him, and performing the limited amount of "physical jerks" possible to one who lies flat in bed. The scope of his energies widened as he was allowed to sit up; he learned from Neil Fraser and from the masseur who visited him daily how to second their efforts, and the nurses found him, at regular intervals, exercising solemnly, grimacing with pain at the creaking of his unused muscles, and working the harder the more he grimaced. The pretty girl in room five, who had just lost her appendix, and the stout old gentleman in three, very bad-tempered with the gout, used to ask their nurses each morning how many inches young Lester had moved since breakfast, and send him messages of congratulation; the matron, tall and beautiful in snowy white, would stand at the end of his bed, cheering him on, with an eye wary for signs of fatigue. And when he sat up—and when he first hobbled on his crutches—the word ran from room to room, and the nurses left their work to peep in at him and applaud. Even the bad-tempered old gentleman, who was wont to drive his nurse almost to tears if a stray sound penetrated his room, was found only smiling on the morning that Dick, forgetting his surroundings in the triumph of his first steps, sat on the end of his bed and woke the echoes with a shout of "Buck up, School!"

In the intervals of exercising there came over him a great peace; something altogether different from the weary patience of the months when he had lain helpless. He seemed to want nothing if his mother were near; looking at her, he would lie quietly, his happy face so peaceful that a tired night nurse, peeping in, declared to a comrade that only to look at that Lester boy made you feel as if you'd had a night's sleep and a cold swim! Not until long after did he confide to his mother what the dread and terror of those first months had been. "It was only you who kept me going," he said. "I knew the others thought I was always going to lie there; only you told me my back wasn't broken—that I'd be better some day. I just hung on to that, when everything else in the world was black, 'cause I knew you'd never tell me a lie!"

Peace too, had come to Merle. Something of her burden lifted upon the ship—when Dick's father and mother had heard from her stumbling lips the story of how she had found Neil Fraser, and had thanked her as best they might. The rest had rolled away on the day of the operation. She had known nothing of it until it was over; they had agreed that she had already borne sufficient strain. She only knew that heaven had suddenly come out of darkness when Mrs. Lester, her worn face smiling through tears, had taken her in her arms and told her that Dick would walk again.

They did not want her to go back to Narrung for a year. So much of shock and horror and bitter self-reproach hung over the vision of her home that they dreaded what might be the effect of returning too soon; besides which, Dick declared that he wanted old "Legs" at Kurrajong—and nobody just then denied Dick anything, which made it fortunate that he was a sweet-natured and unexacting person. So Mrs. Lester had written to ask if Merle might be her daughter for a year—to go to a good boarding-school, returning to Kurrajong, with Dick and his mates, for the holidays. Already Bottles and Teddy and Nugent had unknowingly done much to convince Merle that she might have been wrong in believing that all boys were beasts! She was beginning to laugh naturally; to make, occasionally, remarks that were more than curt monosyllables. "She's getting quite human!" Dick's nurses said.

They were planning the return to Kurrajong that afternoon on the hospital balcony. In a few days they were to go down to a hotel by the sea, where Dick could lie in the sand and let sun and ozone have a share in completing his cure. Mr. and Mrs. Lester would leave him there with a nurse in charge, while they paid a flying visit to their home, to make sure that everything was in readiness for the real return. They would come back for Dick and Merle.

"And that will make it just about breaking-up time," Dick said. "So you three chaps can join up, and we'll all go home in a bunch. Glory, won't it be a day!"

"And Mrs. Fraser and the doctor will come for Christmas," Mrs. Lester said, smiling at them over Dick's head.