her apron and wiped the beads of sweat from her face, her chief eyed
her suspiciously.

"Get your coffee before you touch those dressings in 7-A. Understand? When
did you have your clothes off last?" He growled like a good-natured but
spent old dog.

The girl gave her uniform a disgusted look. "Pretty bad, isn't it? I put
it on four--no, five days ago, but I've had my shoes off twice." She laid
an impulsive hand on the chief's arm. "Promise about the coffee if you'll
promise to do the dressings with me instead of Captain Griggs. He calls
them the 'down-and-outers.' I can't quite stand for that."

"Well, what would you call 'em?"

"The invincibles," she declared. "Wouldn't you?"

But for all her promise, Sheila O'Leary did not get past the door of 7-A
without putting in her head and calling out a "good morning." Whereupon
twelve Irish tongues, dripping almost as many brogues, flung it back at
her with a vengeance.

There were thirteen of them, all told, the remnants of a company of Royal
Irish that had crossed the Scheldt with Haig. As Larry Shea had put it on
the day of their arrival, they "made as grand leavin's as one could expect
under the circumstances." The ambulances that had brought them, along with
the additional seven who had gone west, had pivoted wrong at one of the
crossroads, so that the American Military Hospital No. 10 had fallen heir
to them instead of the B. H. T. It is recorded that even the chief showed
consternation when he looked them over, and Larry, catching the look and
being the only man conscious at the time, snorted indignantly:

"Well, sir, if ye think we're a mess, ye should have seen the Fritzies we
left behind. Furninst them we're an ordther of perfectly decent lads." And
Larry had crumpled up into a grinning unconsciousness.

It was Larry who led the singing; it was Larry now who, with an eye on the
one silent figure in the ward and another on the nurse in the doorway,
threw a wheedling remark to hold her with them a moment "by way of
heartenment to Jamie." "Wait a bit, miss. Patsy MacLean was just askin'
were ye a good hand at layin' a ghost?"

Before Sheila could answer, Harrigan, an Irish-American orderly, stepped
over the threshold and shook a fist at 7-A.

"Aw, cut it out. The way this bunch works Miss O'Leary makes me sick.
Don't cher know she hasn't been off duty for twenty-four hours? Let her
go, can't cher?"

Johnnie O'Neil, from the far end of the room, smiled the sm