"Middling, sir. By gum!" he exclaimed with intense fervour, "it was touch and go with me."
After a few minutes' conversation Doris gave the word for the orderly to remove the patient, and greatly to the sub.'s disappointment she did not linger.
Doris, however, made amends during the afternoon by spending an hour with him. They talked of many things. Amongst other questions, Tressidar enquired after Mr. Greenwood.
"The pater's simply as skittish as a foal," replied the girl, laughing. "Since his adventure in the cave he's as keen as anything for duty. He's joined the National Guard, and is doing duty at a large reservoir near Plymouth. I wish, for some reasons, I were in Devonshire now," she added wistfully. "Just fancy, it's mid-April and there are hardly any signs of spring in the north. I'm longing for another sight of the red earth and bright green foliage of home There's no place like Devonshire."
"Unless it's Cornwall," rejoined Tressidar, loyal to the county of his birth.
"Practically the same," agreed Doris. "It's all the West Country. Next month, I hope, I'll be able to have a few days there—unless there's a big action out yonder—somewhere in the North Sea, you know."
"I hope there will be," remarked the sub. "Of course it will be a terribly costly affair when it does come off, for the Huns will fight like wild cats rather than let their ships be scuttled in Kiel Harbour. But it will be the climax—an end to months and months of tedious waiting and watching."
He, too, wished for a sight of home—home in the strictest sense. Away from Great Britain, the traveller broadly regards the whole of the United Kingdom as "home"; within its limits he will speak of his own county as "home;" narrowed down, "home" resolves itself, perhaps, into a small house with or without a patch of ground attached.
And now, after nearly two years of war, Britons the wide world over were beginning to realise that home in the broadest and the narrowest sense was in danger. Until Prussian militarism was crushed once and for all time, the freehold of the humblest cottage in Great Britain would not be worth twelve months' purchase.
"You've heard the news of Falkenheim's escape?" asked the girl.