"Mac. The old boy was going on to him like anything about you last night. It means you'll be sent out every time. Every time there's anything big on."
"Oh-h! Let's go and tell John…. I suppose," she added, "that's what was the matter with Mrs. Rankin."
She wondered whether it had been the matter with Billy Sutton too; if he too were jealous and afraid.
That night Mrs. Rankin told her what the Colonel really had said: "'C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas—la Croix Rouge.' If you're all sent home to-morrow it'll serve you jolly well right," she said.
But somehow she couldn't make it sound as if he had been angry.
X
She waited.
John had told her to stay there with the wounded man up the turn of the stable yard while he went for the stretcher. His car, packed with wounded, stood a little way up the street, headed for Ghent. Sutton's car, with one of McClane's chauffeurs, was in front of it, ready; she could hear the engine purring.
Instead of going at once for the stretcher John had followed Sutton into the house opposite, the house with the narrow grey shutters. And he had called to her again across the road to wait for him.
Behind her in the yard the wounded man sat on the cobblestones, his back propped against the stable wall. He was safe there, safer than he would have been outside in the ambulance.