The Grey-eyed Lady Decides
Dear old Popple Opstein was the first to find us, rushing up the stairs two steps at a time, calling out my name, and bursting into the room, his yellow hair standing up from his forehead like a parrot's, and his eyes staring out of his violet face.
Miss Borsen flung herself at him, clinging to his great sunburnt hands, laughing and crying hysterically. She would not let him do more than grip my hand, taking him away very quickly for fear the excitement should start the bleeding again, although I imagined that if the agony of that last half-hour had not done so nothing else would.
Presently she brought Nicholson, who came lumbering into the room, fat and jolly as ever, felt my pulse, heard what she had to say about me, and told me the same old thing: "Just you lie still, absolutely still, and don't speak". He promised to come and overhaul me properly later on.
"I've a terrible lot of jobs on hand now," he said.
He must have given orders for no one to visit me, because I was left entirely alone, impatient to hear of all that had happened, and listening to the heavy booming of guns—the Intrepid's guns, out at sea—shelling the retreating Afghans. At least I imagined that was what they were doing.
In about an hour's time the old head boy brought another trestle-bed into my room, and, whilst I was wondering who was going to use it, Mr. Scarlett was carried in, quite unconscious, his head swathed in bandages.
Nicholson followed, and told me that he had had "the devil's own whack" with the butt end of a rifle, and there was no knowing what would happen.
The reaction after the strain of the last four days was now very great, and there was no disguising the fact that I was as weak as a cat. I had had no real sleep for at least four nights, and listening to the long, slow, snoring noise coming from Mr. Scarlett's bed made me drop off to sleep too. When I woke it was night, but by the light of the lamp I saw Percy—a melancholy-looking figure in white—squatting on the floor at the side of the gunner's bed, with his eyes fixed on his hero's bandaged head. He turned and smiled at me when I moved, but only for a moment, turning again like some big faithful dog to watch the gunner.
For two whole days the only other people I saw were Nicholson, who doctored me, and the head boy—his yellow turban once more as smart as a new pin—who brought me food and fed me.