"Hush, dear. That kind of comment won't do. Besides, some horrid stories were afloat about some of the nurses not being all they ought to be."
"That sounds ve'y Yankee, too!"
"Celia! And perhaps it was true that one or two among thousands might not have been everything they should have been," admitted Ailsa, loyal to her government in everything. "And perhaps one or two soldiers were insolent; but neither Letty Lynden nor I have ever heard one unseemly word from the hundreds and hundreds of soldiers we have attended, never have had the slightest hint of disrespect from them."
"They certainly do behave ve'y well," conceded Celia, brushing away vigorously. "They behave like our Virginians."
Ailsa laughed, then, smiling reflectively, glanced at her hand which still bore the traces of a healed scar. Celia noticed her examining the slender, uplifted hand, and said:
"You promised to tell me how you got that scar, Honey-bud."
"I will, now—because the man who caused it has gone North."
"A—man!"
"Yes, poor fellow. When the dressings were changed the agony crazed him and he sometimes bit me. I used to be so annoyed," she added mildly, "and I used to shake my forefinger at him and say, 'Now it's got to be done, Jones; will you promise not to bite me.' And the poor fellow would promise with tears in his eyes—and then he'd forget—poor boy——"
"I'd have slapped him," said Celia, indignantly. "What a darling you are, Ailsa! . . . Now bundle into bed," she added, "because you haven't any too much time to sleep, and poor little Letty Lynden will be half dead when she comes off duty."