Her nonsense dispelled Desmond's gravity. "I can trust you as far as that, I think!" he answered with a laugh; "but I won't have you knocking yourself up again over this. The lad's my subaltern, and it's my business. You shall take to-night, though, if you've a mind to, and my best thanks into the bargain. God alone knows where we should all be without you."
"Just precisely where you are at present, no doubt!" But the softened tone betrayed her appreciation of his honest praise. "It's just a bad habit you've got into, that's the truth, and I've not the heart to break you of it either. But 'tis no time now for playing ball with compliments. I'm busy over a cake. My cook has a pain, an' swears 'tis cholera. An' what with dosing him, an' trying to convince him he's a fool, and seeing after Geoff's tiffin, I'll be melted to one tear-drop presently; but the good man'll have to dine at Mess to-night."
Desmond gathered up his reins, and she waved to him as he rode away.
Punctually at the half-hour she entered the sick-room—cool, practised, business-like, and took over her case as composedly as any trained nurse. For in those early days nursing was as persistent a feature of the hot weather as the punkah itself, and her skill had been acquired in a hard school.
The Boy had been installed, for greater comfort, in Desmond's own bed; and he greeted her with a faint smile of recognition.
"Poor, dear old fellow," she murmured tenderly, pushing the damp hair from his brow; "wait only till the ice comes, an' we'll pull you round finely, never fear."
His lids fell under her soothing touch, and sprinkling her fingers with lavender water she passed them across and across his forehead; a look in her eyes the while that none save her "brother officers" had ever seen there; a look such as her children might have seen, had she been so blest.
Among acquaintances Mrs Olliver passed for a masculine woman, boisterous and good-humoured, though somewhat lacking in the lesser proprieties and affectations which passed for delicacy of feeling. But with all her angularity and mannish ways, she was a fine mother wasted: and in her heart she knew it. There are too many such among us. A mystery of pain and unfulfilled hope which there seems no justifying, save that at times the world is the gainer by their individual loss; and Frank Olliver, being denied the blessedness of children, mothered all the men of her regiment, the formidable Colonel not excepted.