drink o' water?"

"Ah-h!" sighed the injured man. That was all, but it meant so much.

There was a pleasant, trickling, tinkling sound in the heated hut as the
orderly took a tin and dipped it in an iron bucket. The next minute he
was down on one knee with an arm under the sufferer's shoulders, raising
him as gently as if the task was being done by a woman. Then the tin
was held to the poor fellow's lips, and the orderly smiled as he saw the
avidity with which it was emptied.

"Good as a drop of beer--eh?" he said.

"Beer?" replied the patient, returning the smile. "Ha! Not bad in its
way; but I never tasted a pint so good as that."

"Oh! Ah!" said the orderly grimly. "Wait till you get all right again,
and you'll alter your tune."

"Get right again?" whispered the man, so that the corporal should not
hear. "Think I shall?"

"What! with nothing else the matter but a broken bone? Why, of course."

"Ah!" sighed the poor fellow, with a look of relief. "I'm a bit down,
mate, with having so little to eat, and it makes me think. Thankye;
that's done me a lot o' good."

He settled down upon the sack which formed his couch, and the orderly
rose to take back the tin, not seeing that Corporal May's eyes were
fixed upon the vessel, which he watched eagerly, as if expecting to see
it refilled and brought to him. But the orderly merely set it down, and
made a vicious blow at a buzzing fly.

"Well, what have I done?" whined the corporal.

"Done? Heverythink you shouldn't have done," said the orderly. "Look
here, corp'ral; next time the barber cuts your hair, you ask him to take
a bit off the end of your tongue. It's too long, mate."

"Do you want me to report you to the doctor for refusing to bring me a
drink?"

"Not I," said the orderly coolly. "The chief's got quite enough to do
without listening to the men's complaints."

"Then bring me a drink of water directly."

"All right," said the man good-humouredly; "but you'd better not."

"Better not? Why?"

"Because it only makes you cry. Runs out of your eyes again in big
drops, just as it does out of another fellow's skin in perspiration.
Strikes me, corp'ral, that you were meant for a gal."

"You won't be happy till you've been reported, my man," said the
patient.

"And I sha'n't be happy then, mate. Want a drink o' water?"

"Yes; but things are managed here so that the patients have to beg and
pray for it."

"And then they gets it," sai