She had peeked into the cooking, too, and had found out
more things going wrong in five hours than the contract surgeon
had in five months. Blest if there wasn't a court-martial laying
for every one of the orderlies if they said "boo!" for the swine
had been making away scandalous with butter and chocolate and
beef--tea and canned table peaches and sparrow-grass and sardines,
and all the like of that, belly-robbing the boys right and left
perfectly awful.
It was a mighty good account of the contract surgeon that he took
it all so well, and was willing to admit how badly he had been
done. But he was a splendid young fellow, named Marcus, and what
the old lady said, went! He was right sorry he couldn't put her on
the strength of the battery, but the regulations kept women nurses
at the base-hospitals, and anyway (for we broke everything them
days, and there wasn't enough red-tape left to play cat-and-my-
cradle with) Captain Howard hated the sight of a petticoat, and
was dead set against women anywheres. I don't know what they had
ever done to him, but I'm just saying it for a fack. But, however
it was, Marcus said the old lady had to be kept out of sight, or
else the captain would surely send her to the rear under arrest.
Now, this made it a pretty hard game for the old lady to play, and
you can reckon how much dodging she had to do to keep out of the
captain's sight. It was hard about her sleeping, too, for she had
to do that where she could, not to speak of the pay she might have
drawn and didn't, and which, sakes alive! she earned twenty times
over.
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