Quin | Page 9

that he would not be where he was had he observed the rules of the game. But then again, if he had not danced, he never would have----
At that moment something so strange happened that he put a hot hand to a hotter brow and wondered if he was delirious. The singularly vibrant voice that had been echoing in his memory since New Year's eve was saying directly behind him:
"I shall give them all the chocolate they want, Captain Harold Phipps, and you may court-martial me later if you like!"
Quin glanced up hastily, and there, framed in the doorway, in a Red Cross uniform, stood his dream girl, looking so much more ravishing than she had before that he promptly snatched the blue and gray vision from its place of honor and installed a red, white, and blue one instead. So engrossed was he in the apparition that he quite failed to see Captain Phipps surveying him over her shoulder.
"Number 7!" said the Captain with icy decision, "weren't you instructed to stay in bed?"
"I was, sir," said Quin, coming to attention and presenting a decidedly sorry aspect.
"Go back at once, and add three days to the time indicated. This way, Miss Bartlett."
Now, it is well-nigh impossible to preserve one's dignity when suffering a reprimand in public; but when you are handicapped by a shabby bath-robe, a three days' growth of beard, and a grouch that gives you the expression of a bandit, and the public happens to be the one being on earth whom you are most anxious to please, the situation becomes tragic.
Quin set his jaw and shuffled ignominiously off to bed, thankful for once that he had been considered unworthy a second glance from those luminous brown eyes. His satisfaction, however, was short-lived. A moment later the young lady appeared at the far end of the ward, carrying an absurd little basket adorned with a large pink bow, from which she began to distribute chocolates.
A feminine presence in the ward always created a flutter, but the previous flutters were mere zephyrs compassed to the cyclone produced by the new ward visitor. Some one started the phonograph, and Michaelis, who had been swearing all day that he would never be able to walk again, actually began to dance. Witticisms were exchanged from bed to bed, and the man who was going to be operated on next morning flung a pillow at an orderly and upset a vase of flowers. Things had not been so cheerful for weeks.
Quin, lying in the last bed in the ward, alternated between rapture and despair as he watched the progress of the visitor. Would she recognize him? Would she speak to him if she did, when he looked like that? Perhaps if he turned his face to the wall and pretended to be asleep she would pass him by. But he did not want her to pass him by. This might be the only chance he would ever have to see her again!
Back in his fringe of consciousness he was frantically groping for the name the Captain had mentioned: Barnet? Barret? Bartlett? That was it! And with the recovery of the name Quin's mind did another somersault. Bartlett? Where had he heard that name? Eleanor Bartlett? Some nonsense about "Solomon's baby." Why, Rose Martel, of course.
Then all thought deserted him, for the world suddenly shrank to five feet two of femininity, and he heard a gay, impersonal voice saying:
"May I put a cake of chocolate on your table?"
For the life of him, he could not answer. He only lay there with his mouth open, looking at her, while she straightened the contents of her basket. One more moment and she would be gone. Quin staked all on a chance shot.
"Thank you, Miss Eleanor Bartlett," he said, with that ridiculous blush that was so out of keeping with his audacity.
She looked at him in amazement; then her face broke into a smile of recognition.
"Well, bless my soul, if it isn't Sergeant Slim! What are you doing here?"
"Same thing I been doing for six months," said Quin sheepishly; "counting the planks in the ceiling."
"But I thought you had got well. Oh, I hope it wasn't the dancing----"
"Lord, no," said Quin, keeping his hand over his bristly chin. "I'm husky, all right. Only they've got so used to seeing me laying around that they can't bear to let me go."
"Do you have to lie flat on your back like that, with no pillow or anything?"
"It ain't so bad, except at mess-time."
"And you can't even sit up to eat?"
"Not supposed to."
Miss Bartlett eyed him compassionately.
"I am coming out twice a week now--Mondays and Fridays--and I'm going to bring you something nice every time I come. How long will you be here?"
"Three weeks," said Quin--adding, with a funny twist