a bony hand, and regarded her in some disappointment.
"Has he told you? Perhaps you know all about it."

"I know nothing except that--'a girl in France,' was all he told me.
But--first about yourself. How badly are you wounded--and what can we
do for you?"

She dragged from a reluctant Phineas the history of his wound and
obtained confirmation of his statement from a nurse who happened to
pass up the gangway of the pleasant ward and lingered by the bedside.
McPhail was doing splendidly. Of course, a man with a hole through his
body must be expected to go back to the regime of babyhood. So long as
he behaved himself like a well-conducted baby all would be well. Peggy
drew the nurse a few yards away.

"I've just heard that his dearest friend out there, a boy whom he
loves dearly and has been through the whole thing with him in the same
company--it's odd, but he was his private tutor years ago--both
gentlemen, you know--in fact, I'm here just to talk about the boy----"
Peggy grew somewhat incoherent. "Well--I've just heard that the boy
has been seriously wounded. Shall I tell him?"

"I think it would be better to wait for a few days. Any shock like
that sends up their temperatures. We hate temperatures, and we're
getting his down so nicely."

"All right," said Peggy, and she went back smiling to Phineas. "She
says you're getting on amazingly, Mr. McPhail."

Said Phineas: "I'm grateful to you, Mrs. Manningtree, for concerning
yourself about my entirely unimportant carcass. Now, as Virgil says,
'_paullo majora canemus_.'"

"You have me there, Mr. McPhail," said Peggy.

"Let us sing of somewhat greater things. That is the bald translation.
Let us talk of Doggie--if so be it is agreeable to you."

"Carry on," said Peggy.

"Well," said Phineas, "to begin at the beginning, we marched into a
place called Frelus----"

In his pedantic way he began to tell her the story of Jeanne, so far
as he knew it. He told her of the girl standing in the night wind and
rain on the bluff by the turning of the road. He told her of Doggie's
insane adventure across No Man's Land to the farm of La Folette. Tears
rolled down Peggy's cheeks. She cried, incredulous:

"Doggie did that? Doggie?"

"It was child's play to what he had to do at Guedecourt."

But Peggy waved away the vague heroism of Guedecourt.

"Doggie did that? For a woman?"

The whole elaborate structure of her conception of Doggie tumbled down
like a house of cards.