woke up, and you've got to keep very still and quiet. This is the
very best beef tea as you can get for love or money in all Asia Minor.
You let me tuck this napkin under your chin, Polly, and I'll feed you
with a golden tablespoon. You'd 'ardly believe it, but I bought this
in Vienna on my way out here, and it used to belong to the Empress
Catherine of Rooshia, and I gave a twenty-pun' note for it, and it's got
her monogram. You don't mind me chattering, old chap, but I don't want
to excite you, and it's the doctor's orders that I mustn't; but it's
pretty nigh on two years now since I set eyes on you, and when you get
stronger and begin to walk about again, I shall have a heap of things to
tell you.'

The wounded man lay face upwards, and sipped at the tepid liquid
presented to his lips with a huge physical enjoyment. In his whole life
he had never conceived of so complete a pleasure. Only the convalescent
knows the joys of the table.

'That's the last spoonful, Polly,' said John Jervase, wiping the pale
lips with the napkin he had tucked beneath the invalid's chin at the
beginning of the meal. 'You'd like more, wouldn't you?'

Folson tried to nod again, and again achieved nothing more than a
lowering and raising of the eyelids.

'You haven't got to have it, you know, old chap. You've got to be kept
hungry. It's been touch and go for weeks, but you'll be all right now,
if we take care of you. And I reckon we'll do that amongst us.'

A weary voice rose from the neighbouring bed.

'Stop that infernal cackle, whoever you are, and let me sleep. Don't you
know better than to make a row like that in a hospital?'

Once more Polson--this time wide awake--was conscious of the voice of
his enemy.

'It's all right,' his father whispered. 'I'll come back next time you've
got to be fed, old chap, but he doesn't like me, and he's been down on
me a hundred times already.'

The sick man stared at the ceiling where the oil lamp in its sconce on
the wall had made a smoky semi-circle, and where the yellow light now
slept upon the whitewash within the limits of the smoked half-ring. He
was too weak to think very deeply, and too weak to feel very strongly;
but the sense of home within his mind, and the father was the father,
and the voice and the hand had never been unkind since he could
remember, and the scorn and passion of his heart had somehow worn away,
and he was not angry or contemptuous or full of hatred as he had been.