"Nobody wants you to, you little duffer. But the kids used to call you 'colonel,' and now he keeps crying for you. Perhaps if you order him to take the physic, he will—that's all."
"Oh!" briefly responded Dick.
He was sorry to hear that his whilom chums, the "captain" and "lieutenant," were ill. But weren't kids always having something or other, and would he always be sent for to dose them? "Rot!"
However, these thoughts abruptly left him, when, directly after tea, he went to the captain's and saw Mrs. Treves' pale and anxious face, and instead, his old allegiance, but deeper and truer, returned.
"Thank you, Dick," she said kindly in reply to his awkward tender of sympathy. And then they went upstairs.
By Jack's bed a glass of medicine was standing. A nurse was turning Roy's pillow, and Captain Treves stood by her, gnawing his long moustache.
Just then Jack's fretful wail sounded through the room for "'Colonel!' Daddy, Jack wants the 'colonel'!"
"I'm here, old man," said Dick, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Drink this at once," he added, taking up the glass, as he remembered his brother's suggestion.
But Jack had clutched Dick's hand and now lay back sleepily.
Dick felt desperate. He glanced round. Captain and Mrs. Treves and the nurse were gathered round the other little white bed. Was Roy worse? With what he felt to be an unmanly lump in his throat, he leaned over the boy again.