He smiled and shook his head, and his smile delighted the girl. It was the first she had seen in him since his arrival in the camp. His impatience at being kept to his bed was perhaps dying out. She had always heard that the most active and impatient always became reconciled to bed in the end.
"Yes, I did it on purpose," Dave said, still smiling. "You see I wanted to think. You'd have talked if I hadn't. I——"
"Oh, Dave!"
Betty's reproach had something very like resentment in it. She turned abruptly to the boiler of stew and tasted its contents, while the man chuckled softly.
But she turned round on him again almost immediately.
"Why are you laughing?" she demanded quickly.
But he did not seem inclined to enlighten her.
"Half an hour to supper?" he said musingly. "Tom'll be in directly—and Mason."
Betty was still looking at him with her cooking spoon poised as it had been when she tasted the stew.
"Yes," she said, "they'll be in directly. I've only just got to make the tea." She dropped the spoon upon the table and replaced the lid of the boiler. Then she came over to his bedside. "What did you mean saying I should have talked?" she asked, only now there was a smiling response to the smile still lurking in the gray depths of the man's eyes. Dave drew a long sigh of resignation.