"'Don't you remember me, Sister?' I said. 'It was you who nursed me in No. 99 General.'
"She looked at me coldly.
"'As you are the third young officer who has adopted a similar method of introduction this afternoon,' she said, 'you must forgive me if I ask for some confirmation.'
"'Surely you haven't forgotten?' I cried. 'You drew me a sweet little design in dots and dashes to hang over my bed. When I was evacuated to England I wanted to thank you, to ask if we might meet again, but you thrust a clinical thermometer between my teeth and told me not to speak till you gave me permission. Then you left me, and I was whisked away to the boat clinging grimly to the thermometer, inarticulate and heartbroken.'
"'And I presume your object in speaking to me to-day is to return the thermometer?' she said primly.
"That's where I took the full count," continued Frederick, sadly. "If I could have produced any old thing in the thermometer line my bona fides would have been established an' I could have gone ahead like cotton-mill shares. Instead of which, she'd said Good-day and gone while I was thinkin' out explanations. Since that time I've been parading Quelquepart simply bristling with thermometers, but I've never met her again."
"The old Army fault of unpreparedness," remarked Percival. "You ought to go to hospital."
"Don't be juvenile! What have hospitals to do with heartache?"
"Everything, if you go to the right one—the one where your ministering angel ministrates, for instance."
"Percival, old ace," said Frederick, with admiration, "you'll rank among the world's great thinkers yet. Turn on the current again and tell me what is my complaint."