[Fact.]
But his last brave good-bye words rang through her ears every day
of that eternal year: "We'll remember Sergeant Black, won't we,
mother? And we'll each fight it out alone, single-handed, and maybe
they'll give us a chevron for our sleeves when it's over."
But that night when the barracks was wrapped in gloom over the
loss of its boy chum, the surgeon appeared in the men's quarters.
"Hello, boys!" he said, none too cheerfully. "Dull doings, I say.
I'm busy enough, though, keeping an eye on Madam, the major's lady.
She's so deadly quiet, so self-controlled, I'm just a little afraid.
I wish something would happen to--well, make her less calm."
"_I'll_ 'happen,' doctor," chirped up a genial-looking young chap
named O'Keefe. "I'll get sick and threaten to die. You say it's
serious; she'll be all interest and medicine spoons, and making me
jelly inside an hour."
The surgeon eyed him sternly, then: "O'Keefe," he said, "you're the
cleverest man I ever came across in the force, and I've been in it
eleven years. But, man alive! what have you been doing to yourself?
Overwork, no food--why, man, you're sick; look as if you had fever
and a touch of pneumonia. You're a very sick man. Go to bed at
once--at once, I say!"
O'Keefe looked the surgeon in the eye, winked meaningly, and
O'Keefe turned in, although it was but early afternoon.
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