"It is true, she did come here yesterday. But I should hardly wish ... Surely, being of mature age and in the full possession of all my faculties"—there was a smile on the pale lips—"I may be allowed to sign the book myself?"
The doctors interchanged a look. The Colonel said to the patient:
"Mr. Fraithorn, if the idea is not unwelcome to you, I myself will sign the book, and"—he stooped over the bed and laid his hard, soldierly hand kindly on the pale one—"in the event of a less fortunate termination than that we hope for"—the faces of the three surgeons were a study in inscrutability—"I will communicate, as soon as any communication is rendered possible, with the Bishop and Mrs. Fraithorn."
The cough shook Julius as a terrier shakes a rat before he could gasp out:
"Thank you, sir. With all my heart I thank you!"
"You shall thank me when you get well!" The Chief shook the pale hand, crossed the bare boards to Saxham, who stood staring at them sullenly, and took him by the arm. They went out of the ward together, talking in low tones. The medical officers followed. Then the chart-nurse and the probationer who had been banished with the tray, came bustling back with towels, and razors, and a soapy solution in a basin, having a carbolic smell.
Dr. Saxham had gone to take a disinfecting bath, the nurse said, as she went about her minute preparations; and the Commanding Officer had gone with the Staff, and now her poor dear must let himself be got ready.
They wrapped the gaunt skeleton in a white blanket-robe with a heavy monkish cowl to it, and drew thick padded blanket-stockings over the ligament-tied, skin-covered bones that served the wasted wretch for legs, and wheeled in a high, narrow, rubber-wheeled, leather-cushioned stretcher, and laid him on it, light to lift, a very handful of humanity, and wheeled him, hooded and head-first, through the tile-floored passage and out into the golden African sunshine, that baked him gloriously through the coverings, and so into the main building and down a tile-floored passage there.
He prayed silently as he was wheeled, with blinded, cowled eyes, through double doors at the end....