Summer, the yellow-fever
season, is here and--well, I'm getting disheartened. Disheartened
and hungry! They're new sensations to me." She sighed. "I imagined
I was going to work wonders--I thought I was going to be a
Florence Nightingale, and the men were going to idolize me."
"Don't they?" Judson demanded.
"No. That is--not in exactly the way I expected."
"They all want to marry her," O'Reilly explained.
"Insolent bunch!" growled the captain. Then he swallowed hard and
said, "But for that matter, so do I."
"Why, Joe!" Norine cast a startled glance at the big fellow.
"It's a fact," he asserted, doggedly. "I might as well declare
myself here and now. There's always a gang of eavesdroppers
hanging around you."
"He means you, Leslie," O'Reilly said. "Hadn't you better take a
walk?"
Branch rolled a hostile eye at the artilleryman, and his lip
curled. "I'll not move. When he gets through, I'll propose."
"How silly you boys can be!" Norine laughed. "I dare say the
others are joking too, but--"
"Joking?" O'Reilly grinned. "Not at all. I'm the only single man
in camp who isn't in love with you. When you arrived this morning
there was a general stampede for the river. I'll bet the fish in
this stream will taste of soap for years to come."
As if to point O'Reilly's words at the moment appeared Colonel
Lopez, shaved blood-raw and clad in a recently laundered uniform
which was still damp.
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