A Tall Ship Part 22

"My name is Elizabeth. If you wanted to distinguish me from other nurses you might conceivably say 'Nurse Elizabeth.' But even that's not necessary, as I'm the only nurse here at the moment."

The Indiarubber Man looked cautiously round the sunlit enclosure.

"True. So you are----"

"And it's time for your beef-tea," added Betty severely, marching off in the direction of the distant wing.

Her patient watched her slim form retreating and vanish down a green alley. "You dear," he said, "you dear!" He meditated awhile. "It's a rum world," he soliloquised. "Torps has gone. The Young Doc.'s gone.

The Pay's gone."

He mused awhile. "But we gave 'em an almighty hammering. And here am I, alive and kicking again. And there's Betty. . . . It's a rum world." He bent forward and gathered a daisy growing in the border beside his seat. With his bleached, rather unsteady, fingers, he began picking the petals from it one by one.

"She does, she doesn't. She does, she doesn't. She doesn't," repeated the Indiarubber Man in a woeful voice.

A thrush hopped across the lawn, and paused to regard him with one bright eye. Apparently rea.s.sured, it deftly secured and swallowed a worm.

The Indiarubber Man laughed. "Doesn't anybody love you either?" he said.

Betty reappeared in the distance carrying a tray in her hands. The thrush, as if realising that two is company and three none, flew away.

Betty handed a cup to the invalid. "There's a piece of toast too--you must soak it in the beef-tea, and here is a little bell. If you want anything, or you aren't comfortable, you can ring it."

"I see." The Indiarubber Man gravely accepted all three gifts and laid them on the seat beside him. "Thank you awfully. But you aren't going away, are you?"

"Of course I am," said Betty. "I'm very busy. You _must_ remember that this is a hospital, that you're a patient and I'm a nurse." She moved off sedately.

"Miss Betty!" called the Indiarubber Man. "I mean 'Nurse.'" Betty turned and retraced her footsteps. "Wouldn't it be awful if I was suddenly taken very ill indeed--if I came over all of a tremble, and tried to ring the toast and soaked the bell in my beef-tea?"

"From what I've seen of you during the last six weeks," replied Betty the Hospital Nurse, "such a thing wouldn't surprise me a little bit."

She left him to his graceless self.

For a while after she had gone the Indiarubber Man tried to read a book. Tiring of that, he lit a pipe and smoked it without enthusiasm.

Tobacco tasted oddly flavourless and unfamiliar. Then he remembered his beef-tea and drank it obediently, soaking the toast as he had been bidden. Remained the bell. For a long time he sat staring at it.

"Much better get it over," he said aloud. "One way or the other."

Cautiously he looked round. No one was in sight; the windows at the back of the hospital that overlooked this secluded lawn had been the windows of cla.s.s-rooms, and were of frosted gla.s.s. With the aid of his crutches he got up unsteadily, and then, maintaining a precarious balance with one crutch, he thrust the other one under the seat leverwise, and with an effort tipped it over backwards on to the flowerbed.

This accomplished, the Indiarubber Man looked round again to convince himself that the manoeuvre was un.o.bserved. Rea.s.sured on this point, he lowered himself down gingerly over the seat until he was lying on his back with his legs in the air and his head in a clump of marigolds. In this att.i.tude he seized the bell and rang it furiously, feebly waving his uninjured leg the while.

The moments pa.s.sed. From his prostrate position behind the seat he was unable to obtain a view of the lawn, and stopped ringing the bell to listen. He heard a faint cry in the distance, and then the flutter of skirts. The next instant Betty was bending over him, white and breathless.

"Oh!" she cried, "how _did_ it happen? Did the seat tip over backwards--are you hurt?" and kneeling beside him raised his unhallowed head. The Indiarubber Man closed his eyes.

"You told me to ring if I wasn't comfortable, and I wasn't a bit. I hate the smell of marigolds too. No--please don't move; I'm very comfortable now." Betty looked wildly in the direction of the house for help.

"I heard the bell," she said in a queer, breathless little voice, "and I just came out to look . . . and then I ran. I ought to have called someone. Ring the bell--I can't move you by myself. We must have a.s.sistance. How _did_ this happen?"

The Indiarubber Man opened his eyes. "The seat tipped over backwards."

"But _how_?"

"It--it just tipped--as it were."

"Will you promise to lie still for one minute while I run for help--are you in pain?"

"No. As a matter of fact, I wanted to ask you a question."

"What?" asked Betty, reaching for the bell with her disengaged hand.

"Betty, will you marry me?"

The Indiarubber Man's bandaged head was deposited once more among the marigolds. Betty rose to her feet, astonishment and indignation joining forces to overcome laughter within her. The resultant of all three was something suspiciously like tears.

"_What_? Oh, I do believe--I don't believe it was an accident at all----"

"Will you, Betty?" queried the Indiarubber Man from the depths of the marigolds.

Voices sounded beyond the yews. A white-coated orderly appeared in the distance, stood a moment in astonishment, and came running across the gra.s.s towards them.

"Quick! There's someone coming. I swear I won't be budged till you answer."

The orderly arrived panting. "What's up, miss, an accident?"

"Oh," gasped Betty. "Yes!"

The Indiarubber Man suffered himself to be moved.