It was a very humble and flushed Sara Lee who watched the gray car go flying up the street later on. She went in and told the whole story to Harvey's picture, but it was difficult to feel that he was hearing. His eyes were turned away and his face was set and stern. And, at last, she gave it up. This thing which meant so much to her would never mean anything to Harvey. She knew, even then, what he would say.
"Decorate you! I should think they might. Medals are cheap. Everybody over there is getting medals. You feed their men and risk your life and your reputation, and they give you a thing to pin on. It's cheap at the price."
And later on those were Harvey's very words. But to be fair to him they were but the sloughing of a wound that would not heal.
That evening Henri came again. He was, for the first time, his gay self again—at least on the surface. It was as though, knowing what he was going into, he would leave with Sara Lee no feeling, if he never returned, that she had inflicted a lasting hurt. He was everywhere in the little house, elbowing his way among the men with his cheery nonsense, bantering the weary ones until they smiled, carrying hot water for Sara Lee and helping her now and then with a bad dressing.
"If you would do it in this fashion, mademoiselle," he would say, "with one turn of the bandage over the elbow—"
"But it won't hold that way."
"You say that to me, mademoiselle? I who have taught you all you know of bandaging?"
They would wrangle a bit, and end by doing it in Sara Lee's way.
He had a fund of nonsense that he drew on, too, when a dressing was painful. It would run like this, to an early accompaniment of groans:
"Pierre, what can you put in your left hand that you cannot place in the right? Stop grunting like a pig, and think, man!"