The Triumph of Virginia Dale Part 30

"You are pretending. Answer my question."

With closed eyes he pondered aloud. "If she shaved me, her hands would touch my face. They would caress my cheeks, softly--"

Virginia blushed. "I wouldn't touch your face for--for--anything,"

she interrupted.

"How would you shave me then? Who ever heard of a barber who did not touch the face of the people he shaved?"

"I won't do the shaving. I'll bring the hot water. It will be scalding hot, too," she promised.

"Coward," he taunted her, "to scald a man with three ribs and a leg broken."

She gave him a very friendly look for one supposed to harbor such brutal intentions; but as he referred to his injuries the fun died out of her face. "It is unfair for you to suffer while I bear no part of the punishment for my own thoughtlessness." Her lips trembled.

Joe reached over and patted her hand. "It was my own fault, I tell you," he argued. "I am all hunky dory now, anyway."

"I know that my father would be glad to help you. Won't you let him, please?" she begged.

"I want no help." His reply was brusque. "I am able to take care of myself."

Virginia viewed him with thoughtful eyes. "I am afraid, Joe," she protested, "that you only look at this matter from your own point of view. There is my side, too. I want my conscience cleared of that old accident. Every time I think of it, I am miserable. Is it nice that I should be unhappy every time I think of the first time I met you?"

His mood softened and his eyes showed it by their tenderness. "I want every minute of your life to be happy," he said with warmth.

She reddened under his words but was quick to follow up her advantage.

"Help me to be, then," she pleaded.

"There should be a way to satisfy us both," he admitted. He dropped his head back upon his pillow and studied the ceiling for a time. He made a suggestion but she shook her head violently.

She urged something and watched him expectantly.

All at once he began to chuckle. "I have it," he cried.

She leaned towards him and for a long time they were engaged in a conversation which gave them both great pleasure and aroused their enthusiasm to the highest degree.

Miss Knight came along the aisle and stopped at Joe's bedside. "You people are having such a good time that I have to come and get into it."

They welcomed her as an intimate friend.

"We'll have Joe out in a roller chair before long," the nurse boasted.

"That will be pleasanter because he can receive his visitors on the lawn these fine days," she giggled. "After that it won't be long until the hour of sad farewells, will it, Joe?"

"Don't you worry, there will be no tears in my farewell I can tell you.

I shall be so delighted to get from under your tyrannical sway that I am afraid my joy will give me a relapse and keep me in your clutches."

Miss Knight shook her head at the depravity of men. "How's that for ungratefulness? They bring him to me helpless with pain and I bring him back to health. Now he calls me a tyrant. Is that the way to reward a faithful and devoted nurse?"

"Listen a minute, Knightie," begged Joe.

Virginia laughed barefacedly.

Miss Knight squelched the motorcyclist with a look, and addressed her remarks to Virginia. "Did you hear that, now? _Knightie_--what kind of a way is that to address a lady? The minute you utter a kind word near him, he gets gay. He's the freshest thing I ever had in this ward."

She shook her head with weariness. "I've done my part. I have tried to train him."

Joe attempted to smooth the ruffled feelings of the nurse. "Sister,"

he expostulated, "you don't get me--"

"Say," snapped Miss Knight, "if you don't cut out that 'sister'

habit I'll get you all right before I am done with you."

"Help!" groaned Joe. "What kind of a dump is this anyway? They cure my leg but ruin my disposition. No one could ever be the same after two months in this ward."

"I improve them in mind and body," Miss Knight boasted.

"You don't improve a thing," he retorted. "This place is a mad house.

I am kept awake by the voices of patients asking for poison to put them out of their misery."

"Those voices are calling for cooling drinks these warm nights, which," the nurse declared ruefully, "I have to prepare in the hot afternoons." Determination seized her. "Joe Curtis," she exclaimed, "you have had enough lemonade this week to bathe in and I have carried it to you. Unless you apologize immediately you will get no more.

There now."

Before such a threat, Joe meekly surrendered and thus addressed the stern-faced nurse. "Miss Knight, after listening to your bawling out, I know that I should have called you 'Rapper' instead of 'Knightie,'

and I wouldn't have you as a sister at any price."

The nurse tossed her head in disdain. "I don't care to be related to a motorcyclist," she announced.

Joe grinned at Virginia. "What did I tell you? No one cares for a motorcyclist. They have no friends, even in a hospital."

"Why should any one care about them? Their troubles are due to their own foolishness. They are a noisy pest in the streets and they get themselves hurt and take up bed s.p.a.ce in hospitals which might be devoted to better uses." Miss Knight's seriousness gave way and her eyes danced. "And they make their nurses like them in spite of it all," she laughed as she hurried away to another patient.

Virginia watched Joe thoughtfully. "You take a strange way to show Miss Knight that you like her," she told him. "You are always in an argument with her."

"She starts the sc.r.a.p, not I."

"But you make her do it!"

"No," he declared with earnestness, "she jumps on me to stir things up and give her something to talk about."

"I don't understand you at all, Joe. You treat Miss Knight so differently from the way you treat me. Yet, you like her," Virginia urged.

"It's such great sport teasing her."

"Why don't you tease me?"

Joe considered the question. "I don't know," he answered frankly. "I suppose it is because you are different."

Curiosity seized her. "How am I different?"

Great embarra.s.sment held his tongue.