Sanderson was distinctly not given to worship of the feminine; but this very capable-looking and particularly beautiful nurse held his interest from his first conscious moment. It was not mere prettiness or sex-charm; she was, in truth, downright beautiful.
"Magnificent!" the patient told himself, and then wandered off into a feverish state of half-slumber in which the nurse was only one of many characters that flitted across the screen of his imagination.
He was conscious at one time of a grave-looking man standing at the foot of the bed and pulling his Vandyke beard while he talked in jerky sentences to the calm-faced nurse.
"Yes, it is malarial without doubt. I know what those aviation grounds are like. A swamp on one side—all undrained land thereabout. Full of malaria. He likely had a high temperature when he went up in his machine."
Sanderson thought he burst out laughing. He tried to tell the doctor that going up in a cranky aeroplane would give anybody a high temperature.
"With the complication of his wounds he is likely to have a siege of it," the physician said to the nurse. "Are you in charge?"
"Day duty for the present, Doctor Potter."
"Ah—yes. When you are relieved, impress upon the night nurse that she is to call the doctor on duty if there is the least change. I fancy he is quite out of his head."
He was out of his head. He next awoke in the night and a plain-featured nurse endeavored to give him his medicine.
"Say," he demanded, "where's the peach?"