“For God’s sake, don’t go imagining me a hero,” cried Doggie in alarm, “for I’m not. I hate the fighting like poison. The only reason I don’t run away is because I can’t. It would be far more dangerous than standing still. It would mean an officer’s bullet through my head at once.”
“Any man who is wounded in the defence of his country is a hero,” said Peggy defiantly.
“Rot!” said Doggie.
“And all this time you haven’t told me how you got it. How did you?”
Doggie squirmed. The inevitable and dreaded question had come at last.
“I just got sniped when I was out, at night, with a wiring party,” he said hurriedly.
“But that’s no description at all,” she objected.
“I’m afraid it’s all I can give,” Doggie replied. Then, by way of salve to a sensitive conscience, he added: “There was nothing brave or heroic about it, at all—just a silly accident. It was as safe as tying up hollyhocks in a garden. Only an idiot Boche let off his gun on spec and got me. Don’t let us talk about it.”
But Peggy was insistent. “I’m not such a fool as not to know what mending barbed wire at night means. And whatever you may say, you got wounded in the service of your country.”
It was on Doggie’s agitated lips to shout a true “I didn’t!” For that was the devil of it. Had he been so wounded, he could have purred contentedly while accepting the genuine hero’s meed of homage and consolation. But he had left his country’s service to enter that of Jeanne. In her service he had been shot through the leg. He had no business to be wounded at all. Jeanne saw that very clearly. To have exposed himself to the risk of his exploit was contrary to all his country’s interests. His wound had robbed her of a fighting man, not a particularly valuable warrior, but a soldier in the firing line all the same. If every man went off like that on private missions of his own and got properly potted, there would be the end of the Army. It was horrible to be an interesting hero under false pretences.