“Well, at Bill, then. Don’t be frightened, Lizzie; come farther into the room. I want you to see a photograph I’ve got here.”
Like a dog who wonders whether it is safe to go to a stranger, she advanced slowly, one step at a time; while Peter, twirling his cap awkwardly in his hands, kept beside her. Once or twice he glanced uneasily round the room, but otherwise his eyes were fixed on Lizzie as a child looks at its mother when it’s scared.
“My God, Jimmy!” whispered the doctor, “there’s going to be as big a sufferer as you if we’re successful.”
And he was looking as he spoke at the girl, who, with a sudden instinctive feeling of protection, had put out her hand and taken Peter’s.
Like a pair of frightened children they crept on until they came to the photograph; then they stopped in front of it. And the two men came a little closer. It was the girl who spoke first, in a low voice of wondering awe:
“Gawd! it’s you, Bill—that there bloke in the frame. You were a blinking orficer.”
With a look of pathetic pride on her face, she stared first at the photograph and then at the man beside her. “An orficer! Bill—an orficer! What was ’is regiment, mister?” The girl swung round on Jimmy. “Was ’e in the Guards?”
“No, Lizzie,” said Lethbridge. “Not the Guards. He was in the cavalry. The 9th Hussars,” and the man, who was holding the frame foolishly in his hands, suddenly looked up. “The Devil’s Own, Peter,” went on Lethbridge quietly. “C Squadron of the Devil’s Own.”
But the look had faded; Peter’s face was blank again.
“I don’t remember, guv’nor,” he muttered. “And it’s making me ’ead ache—this.”
With a little cry the girl caught his arm, and faced Lethbridge fiercely.
“Wot’s the good of all this?” she cried. “All this muckin’ abaht? Why the ’ell can’t you leave ’im alone, guv’nor? ’E’s going to ’ave one of ’is ’eads now—’e nearly goes mad, ’e does, when ’e gets ’em.”
“I think, Lizzie, that perhaps I can cure those heads of his.”
It was Mainwaring speaking, and the girl, still holding Peter’s arm protectingly, looked from Lethbridge to the doctor.
“And I want to examine him, in another room where the light is a little better. Just quite alone, where he won’t be distracted.”
“You’re taking ’im away from me—that’s wot yer doing. And I won’t ’ave it. Yer don’t want to go, Bill, do yer? Yer don’t want to leave yer Liz?”