The Dash for Khartoum | Page 7

do not
expect an answer from you just at this moment. You will naturally wish
to talk it over with her, but I shall be glad if you will let us have an
answer as soon as you can, as it is necessary that we should obtain
another nurse without loss of time."
"What you say seems to me very fair, Captain Clinton," the sergeant
said. "I would give anything, sir, that this shouldn't have happened. I
would rather have shot myself first. I can answer for myself, sir, that I
accept your offer. Of course, I am sorry to lose the child; but a baby is
not much to a man till it gets to know him and begins to talk, and it will
be a satisfaction to know that he is in good hands, with a far better
look-out than I could have given him. I will see my wife, sir, and let
you know in half an hour."
"Do you think that she will consent, Humphreys?"
"I am sure she will," the sergeant said briefly, and then added, "There is
nothing else she could do," and saluting he went out of the room.
"He suspects his wife of having done it on purpose," Dr. Parker said,
speaking for the first time since the sergeant had entered the room. "I
don't say he knows it, but he suspects it. Did you notice how decidedly
he said that she would consent? And I fancy up to now she has had her

own way in everything."
"Well, what do they say?" Mrs. Humphreys asked as her husband
entered the door. He told her shortly the offer that had been made. She
laughed scornfully. "A likely thing that! So they are to have both
children, and I am not to be allowed even to see them; and they are to
pick and choose as to which they like to say is theirs, and we are to be
shouldered out of it altogether! It is just as bad for me not to know
which is my boy as it is for that woman; but they are to take the whole
settlement of things in their hands, my feelings to go for nothing. Of
course you told them that you would not let them do such a thing?"
"I did not tell them anything of the sort. I told them that I accepted their
proposal, and that I could answer for your accepting it too."
"Then you were never more wrong in your life, John Humphreys!" she
said angrily; "I won't consent to anything of the sort. Luck has thrown a
good thing in our hands, and I mean to make the most of it. We ought
to get enough out of this to make us comfortable for life if we work it
well. I did not think that you were such a soft!"
"Soft or not soft, it is going to be done as they propose," her husband
said doggedly. "It is burden enough as it is--we have lost our child. Not
that I care so very much about that; there will be time enough for more,
and children do not add to the comfort of close little quarters like these.
But whether we like it or not, we have lost the child. In the next place
we shall never hear the end of it in the regiment, and I shall see if I
cannot manage to get transferred to another. There will be no standing
the talk there will be."
"Let them talk!" his wife said scornfully. "What do we care about their
talk!"
"I care a great deal," he said. "And I tell you why, because I know what
they will say is true."
"What do you mean?" she asked quickly.

"I mean, Jane, that I know you mixed up those children on purpose."
"How dare you say so!" she exclaimed making a step forward as if she
would strike him.
"I will tell you why I say so. Because I went to the drawer this morning
before going to parade, and I saw some of Mrs. Clinton's baby's
night-gowns in it. Yes, I see they are all in the wash-tub now; but they
were there this morning, and when I heard you say you had put the
child into one of our baby's night-gowns because it had no clean ones
of its own, I knew that you were lying, and that you had done this on
purpose."
The woman was silent a moment and then burst out, "You are a greater
fool than ever I thought you! I did tell a lie when I gave that reason for
putting the child into our baby's gown. When I took the two clean ones
out of the drawer I did not notice until