“That’s all right,” said the nurse. “Now you’re friends.”
“He had no right to call me an idjit,” said the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantryman. He was an aggressive, red-visaged man with bristly black hair and stubbly black moustache.
“If you’ll agree that he wasn’t grousing, Penworthy, I’m sure Trevor will apologize for calling you an idiot.”
And into the nurse’s eyes crept the queer smile of the woman learned in the ways of children.
“Didn’t I say he wasn’t grousing? It was only his ignorance?”
Doggie responded. “I meant no offence, mate, in what I said.”
The other growled an acceptance, whereupon the nurse smiled an ironic benediction and moved away.
“Where did you get it?” asked Penworthy.
Doggie gave the information and, in his turn, made the polite counter-inquiry.
Penworthy’s bit of shrapnel, which had broken a rib or two, had been acquired just north of Albert. When he left, he said, we were putting it over in great quantities.