“All right?” he said very low.
But I just couldn’t speak to him. I don’t know what made me do it, but I went up to him and he looked at the bump on my forehead and said, “Hurt?”
“You should worry about that,” I told him. Then I kind of fixed the Silver Fox scarf better, so that it was around his neck and I tied it in the Silver Fox knot. “Your fellows won’t mind if you wear it a little while,” I said, and then I unfastened his own scarf, yellow and brown, and tied it around my neck. “There’s no fellow can get this away from me to-night,” I said, “I’m going to wear the Raven scarf—I am.”
Then, all of a sudden, I noticed that Doc had gone away and I was holding his head up alone. So I let it down on the cushion very easy and I saw we were all alone. Maybe you won’t understand and it’s hard to tell you. But I didn’t say anything; I just stayed there and rubbed his forehead.
“We told her,” he said, kind of as if he was weak and tired.
“Yop,” I said, “you told her.”
“Somebody’ll get it—maybe,” he said.
“I ain’t thinking about that,” I said, “I’m only thinking about how you did it. I—I don’t want the signalling badge in my patrol now, honest I don’t, Wig. I want it to stay where it belongs. And I want there to be only just the one in the troop. I got mad first. That’s because I’m always getting mad, I guess. But there will never be any signalling badge in my patrol, Wig. That’s going to be the rule.”
“There’ll be a Gold Cross though,” he said. And then he shut his eyes.
But I stayed right there—just because—oh, I don’t know, just because I wanted to stay right there. You can’t always tell why you want to do a thing.