“And the lilting!” Culmullen closed his eyes the better to recall it. “I mind the last time I heard one. The sky was turned orange, and the lough turned gold. The marsh was glistening with mist, and out of the reeds where her nest was she flew. It was like a feathered bundle of song thrown skyward.”
“Aye, what a song!” Johnnie, the piper, spoke with ecstasy. “Hark! I can make it.” He puckered his lips, and through them came the sweet, lilting notes of the lark’s matin song.
“Make it again.” Jamie was leaning forward in his chair, his hands gripping the arms.
Again the piper whistled it through, and then again and again. A smile brushed Jamie’s lips, and the others, watching, breathless, saw.
“What is it?” asked “Granny,” softly.
“Naught. Only for the moment I was thinking I could be smelling the dew on the bogs, yonder. Can ye pipe for the blackbirds, Johnnie?”
And Johnnie piped.
So a new order of things was established in Ward 7-A, and as heretofore the lads had vied in witty derision of their calamities they vied now with one another in telling tales of Ireland. Each marshaled forth his dearest, greenest memory, clothed in its best, to fill the ears and heart of Jamie O’Hara. Sometimes he smiled, and then there was a great, silent rejoicing among the twelve; sometimes he asked for more, and then tongues tripped over one another in mad effort to furnish forth a memory more wonderful than all that had gone before. But more often he sat still and white, as if he heard nothing. And in the midst of it all, as the lads drew each day nearer to health, Sheila noted a new uneasiness among them. It was Larry who spoke the trouble while the nurse was doing his dressings. He whispered it, so the others should not hear.
“By rights we don’t belong here. Well, they’ll be movin’ us soon as we’re mended, won’t they?”
The nurse nodded.