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“You get out, Chris,” said Danvers, “we all know you’re on your head with aching to go. We’re all right; and I’m off home on furlough to-morrow; I’ll get straightened out there quicker, and I’ll be after you next week, see if I don’t! I knew you’d be hanging on, so I won’t give you the excuse. My sister’s coming to-morrow.”

“Really, Dick,” gasped Spruce, “and you–you’re sure the other boys are so’s I can leave?”

“Well, you know there are going to be some women from the Red Cross, last of the week–Oh, by the time we are all out of it, this will be a swell hospital, with all the luxuries! Spruce, go, and don’t get hurt, or I’ll murder you!”

Spruce giggled like a happy girl. He was on his way to put in his application to join his regiment the next day–after Dick Danvers’ sister had arrived, when something happened. He did not exactly know what it was himself, until he felt the water on his forehead and tried to lift himself up from the sand, catching the arm of the surgeon-in-chief. “Sunstroke, doctor?” he whispered.

“Just fainted,” the surgeon answered cheerfully, “you’ve been overdoing it in this heat. Be careful.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, sir,” Spruce grinned back; “had it lots of times, only not so bad. All the boys git giddy heads–“

Somehow the ready words faltered off his tongue; the surgeon had been fumbling at his blouse, under the pretext of opening it for air, he was looking in a queer, intent way at Spruce’s chest.

Of a sudden the eyes of doctor and soldier, who had been nurse, met and challenged each other. There was a dumb terror in the soldier’s eyes, a grave pity in the surgeon’s. “I seen them spots yesterday,” said Spruce, slowly, in a toneless voice, “but I wouldn’t believe they was typhoid spots, nor they ain’t !”

“You get inside and get a drink, Spruce, and go to bed,” said the doctor. “Of course, I’m not certain, but as good a nurse as you knows that it isn’t safe to try to bluff typhoid fever.”

By this time Spruce was on his feet, able to salute with his reply: “That’s all right, Major, but–I got to keep up till Danvers gits off with his folks, or he’d be kicking and want to stay. Jest let me see him off, and I’ll go straight to bed.”

“No walking about, mind, though,” said the doctor, not well pleased, yet knowing enough of the two men to perceive the point of the argument.

Spruce saw Danvers off, with a joke and a grin, and an awkward bow for Danvers’ sister. Then he went back to the hospital and went to bed, having written his aunt’s address on a prescription pad (one of his acquirements in his foraging trips) with a remarkably spelled request that his pay be sent her, and his other property be given his friend, R. E. Danvers, to divide among his friends, giving the captain first choice.

“Lots of folks die of typhoid fever,” he remarked quite easily, “and it don’t hurt to be ready. I feel like I was in for a bad time, and I ain’t stuck on the nursing here a little bit.”

Before the week was out he recognized as well as the doctors that he was a very sick man.

“If you’d only gone off with your regiment three weeks ago,” the doctor growled one day, “you’d have missed this, Spruce.”

“That’s all right,” said Spruce, “but some of the boys are home that wouldn’t be, maybe. I guess it’s all right. Only, you know captain and Danvers; I wish you’d write back to the old town and tell the committee I done my duty. I can’t be a credit to the company, but I done my duty, though I expect there’s folks in town may think I was malingering.”

“Stop talking!” commanded the doctor. “Did you know the women are coming to-morrow; you are to have a nurse of your own here?”