“Yes,” she said. “Bring him.”
The driver drew rein, wheeled his team, and drove into the great gateway. “Hospital’s plum full, ma’am,” he said. “Wait; I’ll carry him up. Head’s bust a leetle—that’s all. A day’s nussin’ will bring him into camp again.”
The trooper staggered upstairs with his burden, leaving a trail of dark, wet spots along the stairs, even up to the girl’s bed, where he placed the wounded man.
The bandmaster became conscious when they laid him on the bed, but the concussion troubled his eyes so that he was not certain that she was there until she bent close over him, looking down at him in silence.
“I thought of you—when I was falling,” he explained vaguely—“only of you.”
The color came into her face; but her eyes were steady. She set the flaring dip on the bureau and came back to the bed. “We thought of you, too,” she said.
His restless hand, fumbling the quilt, closed on hers; his eyes were shut, but his lips moved, and she bent nearer to catch his words:
“We noncombatants get into heaps of trouble—don’t we?”
“Yes,” she whispered, smiling; “but the worst is over now.”
“There is worse coming.”