It was Larry who led the singing; it was Larry now who, with an eye on the one silent figure in the ward and another on the nurse in the doorway, threw a wheedling remark to hold her with them a moment “by way of heartenment to Jamie.” “Wait a bit, miss. Patsy MacLean was just askin’ were ye a good hand at layin’ a ghost?”
Before Sheila could answer, Harrigan, an Irish-American orderly, stepped over the threshold and shook a fist at 7-A.
“Aw, cut it out. The way this bunch works Miss O’Leary makes me sick. Don’t cher know she hasn’t been off duty for twenty-four hours? Let her go, can’t cher?”
Johnnie O’Neil, from the far end of the room, smiled the smile of a cherub. “An’ don’t ye know, laddie, that it’s always the saints in heaven that has the worst sinners on their hands? ’Tis jealous ye are, not being wicked enough to get a bit more of her attention yerself.”
Sheila smiled impartially at them both, and with a parting promise of dressings to come she hurried off. Ward 7-A settled itself to wait for the worst and the best that the day had to offer. The room was a very small one, and the thirteen cots barely crowded into it, with space at the foot for Jamie O’Hara’s wheel-chair to go the length and turn. They had been kept together by Sheila’s urgent plea that they should be given a ward to themselves instead of scattering them through the larger wards, and it is doubtful if in all the war a more quietly merciful act had been executed. Not one of the thirteen but would have scorned to show any sign of dependence on the others, yet intuitively the girl had guessed what they would be able to give one another in the matter of spiritual succor. The way they continually hectored and teased, matched wits and good humor, as they had matched strength and daring in the old fighting-days before the hospital, was meat and drink to the souls struggling for dominance over mutilated bodies. United, they were men; separated—Sheila had often shuddered to think what pitiful, pain-tortured beings they might have been.
When she returned to the ward the chief was with her, and their combined arrival brought forth a prolonged, fortissimoed wail shammed forth in good Gaelic fashion. Larry’s great hairy arm shot out, and a vindictive forefinger was wagged in the direction of the third cot.
“Ye’d best begin with Patsy MacLean this day. He hasn’t been laid out first in a fortnight.”
The others, taking the words from Larry’s tongue, chorused, “Aye, begin wi’ Patsy, the devil take him!”
“Why the devil? Wouldn’t Fritzie do as well?” The chief smiled indulgently upon them all.
“’Tis a case for the devil, this time. Tell the colonel what you were putting over us last night,” Michael Kenney, lance-corporal, growled through an undercurrent of chuckle.