. "First question--will I fly again?"

"Of course! In four or five weeks you'll be good as new."

"Four or five weeks! What--"

"Careful now, or you'll use up all your questions. When you set that
Camel down in a shell hole she flipped over and your head was slightly
softer than a big rock that happened to be handy. I would have bet on
the rock being softest, but it seems I'd lost. You went blotto. A bunch
of soldiers dragged you out from under what was left of that
Camel--which wasn't much. Then an ambulance brought you back here. This
hospital is about five kilos from squadron headquarters, and I've been
back here twice a day for the past five days, worrying my head off for
fear you'd never come to."

"Five days?" Red responded, his voice indicating his disbelief.

"Yep, five days. Three days passed before you even opened your eyes. Try
and land on your feet, next time."

"The nurse tells me my left arm is broken," McGee said. "Wonder how I
got that?"

"You've used up all your questions," Larkin told him, laughing, "and
I've used up all my time. I want to be good so that Old Saw Bones will
let me see you to-morrow night."

"Wait," McGee began, but the nurse interposed herself.

"No more to-night," she said. "In a day or two you can talk as much as
you like."

The next two or three days passed slowly for McGee. Each night Larkin
came back from squadron headquarters in a motor cycle side car, but his
stays were so brief that Red had no chance to get any but the most
fragmentary news.

As for news from the front, he could drag nothing from the nurses or
from Larkin, and when he inquired after members of the squadron Buzz
would reply with an evasive, "Oh, they're all right," and shift the
conversation into the most commonplace channels.

Ten days of this, and the surgeon gave his O.K. to the use of a wheel
chair, which was pushed around the grounds by one of the hospital
orderlies. The grounds were extremely beautiful, the hospital having
been a famous resort hotel before the exigencies of warfare required its
conversion into one of the thousands of hospitals scattered throughout
France.

Great beech and chestnut trees covered the lawn, and to one side was a
miniature lake, centered by a sparkling fountain, on whose wind-dimpled
surface graceful, proud swans moved with a stately ease that scorned
haste or show of effort.

On the second day of exploration in the wheel chair, Larkin came in the
afternoon