Again Doggie thought, somewhat wistfully, of the old care-free, full physical life, and again he murmured:
“It’s all dam funny!”
Peggy stood for a moment at the door scanning the ward; then perceiving him, she marched down with a defiant glance at nurses and blue-uniformed comrades and men in bed and other strangers, swung a chair and established herself by his bedside.
“You dear old thing, I couldn’t bear to think of you lying here alone,” she said, with the hurry that seeks to cover shyness. “I had to come. Mother’s gone fut and can’t travel, and Dad’s running all the parsons’ shows in the district. Otherwise one of them would have come too.”
“It’s awfully good of you, Peggy,” he said, with a smile, for fair and flushed she was pleasant to look upon. “But it must have been a fiendish journey.”
“Rotten!” said Peggy. “But that’s a trifle. You’re the all-important thing. Tell me straight. You’re not badly hurt, are you?”
“Lord, no,” he replied cheerfully. “Just the fleshy part of the leg—a clean bullet-wound. Bone touched; but they say I’ll be fit quite soon.”
“Sure? They’re not going to cut off your leg or do anything horrid?”
He laughed. “Sure,” said he.