“Oh, well, I have been ill and a man is unlike himself when he is ill,” he answered, trying not to display temper. But Nona did make him angry, perhaps oftener than she knew, although she was every once in a while aware of it. But Nona’s coolness, her little air of aloofness after doing her full and complete duty as a nurse, would have annoyed any man, who chanced to believe he was falling in love with his nurse.

[160]However, Lieutenant Martin meant to go slowly and circumspectly, being determined in the end to have his way. He had not forgotten Nona’s attitude toward him, nor her words, when he had once or twice ventured too far in his revelations.

[160]

“Patients who are convalescing always think they are in love with their nurses. Please spare me the illusion,” was a never-to-be-forgotten reply.

“I will try to make the men in camp like me better if it is possible, when I return,” he answered. “It is not agreeable, is it, to be unpopular? But then you have never known that misfortune,” Lieutenant Martin continued, with such humility and good humor that it was Nona who felt reproached.

“You have read ‘Vanity Fair,’ of course, Miss Davis. Funny, I keep thinking of certain portions of it tonight! That is because my mind is ever upon this war! But do you remember when Amelia and George Osborne and Dobbin and Becky and Sir Rawdon Crawley were all in Brussels and there was a great ball given[161] by a Duchess on the night of June 15, 1815, the night before the Battle of Waterloo? That night there were many people more interested in the ball than the enemy at the front. I always recall the command that came: ‘The enemy has passed the Sambre and our left is already engaged. We are to march in three hours.’ I keep hoping and waiting for a message of that kind, only I trust our American soldiers will be in camp and ready to march on the night that command reaches us.”

[161]

Nona shivered a little.

“Please don’t talk of war tonight. Of course I long for our American soldiers to get into action, I mean great numbers of them, not just a comparatively few soldiers, such as are here now. Nevertheless, I think I dread the moment when that word shall come more than almost anything in life. I shall worry over you, too, Lieutenant Martin; you see, one is always especially interested in one’s patients.”

“Thank you,” Lieutenant Martin 

 Prev. P 69/113 next