“Well, I did then,” said his neighbour, sturdily, “I don’t think getting unpicked is any fun. But it don’t take long, that’s one thing.” The other boy grinned at him in an understanding fashion. “Y’see, he’s two years younger’n me,” he told Norah. “He’s only a bit of a nipper!”
Tommy alone declined to make friends. He burrowed into his pillow when they came to him, and refused to show so much as the tip of his nose. The sound of his sorry little wail followed them over the ward.
“Don’t mind him,” the nurse told the girls, as they turned away from the cot, with downcast faces. “He’ll be better after a while, and then he’ll be delighted with his presents. He’s homesick, poor mite.” They went on down the ward.
Jim turned back presently. He sat down near Tommy’s cot and took out a toy watch that had beautiful qualities in the way of winding. But he did not offer it to Tommy. Instead he sat still, dangling it from his fingers.
“Had a sick leg myself, once,” he remarked casually, apparently to the watch. As might have been expected, the watch made no response; neither did the black head burrowed in the pillow turn at all.
“Hurt it falling off a horse,” Jim went on. “At least, the horse fell too. Tried to jump a log on him—and he shied at a snake lying on the top of the log.”
The boy in the next cot was listening with all his ears. Tommy’s low crying had stopped.
“Big black snake,” said Jim. “Must have scared him a bit when he saw the horse rising. At any rate he slid off like fun—and my old horse shied badly, and went over the log in a somersault. Landed on his head, and pitched me about fifteen yards away!”
“Was you much hurt?” The boy in the next cot shot out an irrepressible question.
Jim was not in a hurry to answer. The black head was turning ever so little towards him, but he did not seem to see. He played with the watch in an absent-minded fashion.