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Page 54

"Vegetable," said Peter shamelessly.

"Soft or hard!"

"Soft."

This was plainly a disappointment. A pair of horns might be
vegetable; they could hardly be soft.

"A kitten?"

"A kitten is not vegetable, James."

"I know. A bowl of gelatin from Harry!" For by this time Harmony
was his very good friend, admitted to the Jimmy club, which
consisted of Nurse Elisabet, the Dozent with the red beard, Anna
and Peter, and of course the sentry, who did not know that he
belonged.

"Gelatin, to be sure," replied Peter, and produced the horns.

It was a joyous moment in the long low ward, with its triple row
of beds, its barred windows, its clean, uneven old floor. As if
to add a touch of completeness the sentry outside, peering in,
saw the wheeled chair with its occupant, and celebrated this
advance along the road to recovery by placing on the window-ledge
a wooden replica of himself, bayonet and all, carved from a bit
of cigar box.

"Everybody is very nice to me," said Jimmy contentedly. "When my
father comes back I shall tell him. He is very fond of people who
are kind to me. There was a woman on the ship--What is bulging
your pocket, Peter?"

"My handkerchief."

"That is not where you mostly carry your handkerchief."

Peter was injured. He scowled ferociously at being doubted and
stood up before the wheeled chair to be searched. The ward
watched joyously, while from pocket after pocket of Peter's old
gray suit came Jimmy's salvage--two nuts, a packet of figs, a
postcard that represented a stout colonel of hussars on his back
on a frozen lake, with a private soldier waiting to go through
the various salutations due his rank before assisting him. A gala
day, indeed, if one could forget the grave in the little mountain
town with only a name on the cross at its head, and if one did
not notice that the boy was thinner than ever, that his hands
soon tired of playing and lay in his lap, that Nurse Elisabet,
who was much inured to death and lived her days with tragedy,
caught him to her almost fiercely as she lifted him back from the
chair into the smooth white bed.

He fell asleep with Peter's arm under his head and the horns of
the deer beside him. On the bedside stand stood the wooden
sentry, keeping guard. As Peter drew his arm away he became aware
of the Nurse Elisabet beckoning to him from a door at the end of
the ward Peter left the sentinel on guard and tiptoed down the
room. Just outside, round a corner, was the Dozent's laboratory,
and beyond the tiny closet where he slept, where on a stand was
the photograph of the lady he would marry when he had become a
professor and required no one's consent.

The Dozent was waiting for Peter. In the amiable conspiracy which
kept the boy happy he was arch-plotter. His familiarity with
Austrian intrigue had made him invaluable. He it was who had
originated the idea of making Jimmy responsible for the order of
the ward, so that a burly Trager quarreling over his daily
tobacco with the nurse in charge, or brawling over his soup with
another patient, was likely to be hailed in a thin soprano, and
to stand, grinning sheepishly, while Jimmy, in mixed English and
German, restored the decorum of the ward. They were a quarrelsome
lot, the convalescents. Jimmy was so busy some days settling
disputes and awarding decisions that he slept almost all night.
This was as it should be.

The Dozent waited for Peter. His red beard twitched and his white
coat, stained from the laboratory table, looked quite villainous.
He held out a letter.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Tue 23rd Dec 2025, 23:34

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart