"It's so nice to have you come in and talk to me again, Big Yeogh Wough," he said a little tremblingly.
"Yes. It is very nice," I agreed. "You won't drive me away from you again, will you?"
"No. I'll be good. It's been perfectly beastly having you angry with me. And to-morrow you'll let me buy you some flowers, won't you? I've got enough of my pocket money to buy some tulips. Oh, it's very early for them, I know, and they'll cost a lot; but it pays to get them, because they die so prettily. Other flowers look ugly when they're dying, but tulips don't."
"That's their Compensation for looking vulgar when they're alive," thought I. But I did not say so.
And then we began to sing together, very low, a little song of the French navy, which I had taught him a few months before.
Oh, the joyous freedom and swing that he put into that song--he, a small child, lying there in bed and singing!
Two or three months later, when we had left Paris and were at home again in London, I got an example of his courage.
Ever since he had been going to school and so had been out of reach of the care of nurses, he had had cold after cold. Much good did it do for me to live a life of perpetual watchfulness in the house, taking care that he should get continual fresh air without any draughts, when at his school there was no watch kept and he was allowed to sit for hours between two open windows, or between an open window and an open door! So the colds went on into tonsilitis, and at last he was very ill and had to have a serious operation.
The anæsthetist who came from one of the London hospitals to administer the chloroform was a man with one of the gentlest and kindest of faces, and yet somehow Little Yeogh Wough, though he had been told nothing, knew from the first that this man's coming boded him no good. He ran to me to protect him, showing an infinite trust in me that in a way was heart-breaking. And then I realised that for the first time a situation had come about in which I could not help him, but in which he had to face whatever there might be of pain and risk quite alone and unhelped, like a grown man.
I told him this, and for a moment his brown wistful eyes met mine with a look in them which I shall never forget. Then he turned and went over to the table that had been made ready for the operation, and lay down upon it, saying quietly: