“Why,” I replied, “I didn’t even know it was you, until after I got here. I was in a hurry when I slung you over my shoulder. Your face was downward. So you needn’t thank me for it; but I am as thankful as you that I did it. I fixed that big Boche that was swinging his rifle for a club, though.” Then I told him about it.
“You always were good and brave, Davie.”
“There is where you are out, this time, Jot,” I said. “Don’t tell any one; but I was awful scared before we started for the Boche trench. I would have run away had I dared. I suppose courage is a cumulative thing, mine had to be given time to accumulate.”
Jot lay back and laughed.
“You needn’t laugh,” I said. “It is true as gospel, and I am ashamed to let you know, I was a dreadful coward; but it is true!”
After feeding on thin soup and a single egg on toast for breakfast, for a week, I bribed the nurse to give me a beefsteak and some potatoes and, on that forbidden diet, grew so strong that I got my discharge from the hospital in a day or two.
I am sincerely convinced that the most of my faintness was from underfeeding,—sheer hunger. But that theorist of a doctor would not believe it and thought his low diet and medicines had helped me to a rapid recovery.
I was glad to get back to my company again, and to receive the rough but hearty congratulations of my comrades.
“You still look pale,” said Sutherland. “Are you feeling all right now?”
“Yes,” I replied. “You’d look as pale as I do if they had fed you on air. When’s mess?”