If ever a good, loyal little heart was torn into piteous
shreds, that little heart was Phyllis's.
In the bare X-ray room of the hospital, which happened to be
vacant, Betty sat on the one straight-backed wooden chair, while
a weeping damsel on the uncarpeted floor sobbed in her lap and
confessed her sins and sought absolution.
Of course Gedge was a fool. If I, or any wise, diplomatic, tactful
person like myself, had found it necessary to tackle a young woman
on the subject of a matrimonial alliance, we should have gone
about the business in quite a different way. But what could you
expect from an anarchical Turk like Gedge?
Phyllis, not knowing whether she were outcast and disinherited or
not, found, of course, a champion in Betty, who, in her spacious
manner, guaranteed her freedom from pecuniary worries for the rest
of her life. But Phyllis was none the less profoundly unhappy, and
it took a whole convoy of wounded to restore her to cheerfulness.
You can't attend to a poor brave devil grinning with pain, while a
surgeon pokes a six-inch probe down a sinus in search of bits of
bone or shrapnel, and be acutely conscious of your own two-penny-
half-penny little miseries.
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