Them's one of the things you
learn in hospital, and the most are the better for it; but the
captain, you see, was getting his lesson a bit late. So he was
layed off, with amigos to carry him or bolo him (like what amigos
are when they get a chance), and the old lady give a whoop and
took him in charge. My! If she wasn't good to that man. and, as
for coals of fire, she regularly slung them at him! The doctor,
too, got his little axe in, and was everlastingly praising the old
lady, and telling the captain he would have been a goner, if it
hadn't been for her! And, when the captain grew better--which he
did after a few days--he was that meek he'd eat out of your hand.
The old lady was not only a champion nurse, but she was a buster
to cook. Give her a ham-bone and a box of matches and she could
turn out a French dinner of five courses, with oofs-sur-le-plate,
and veal-cutlets in paper pants! It was then, I reckon, she
settled the captain for good; and, when he picked up and was able
to walk about camp, leaning pretty heavy on her arm, she called
him "George" and "My boy"--like that--and you might have taken him
for Benny and she his Ma.
There was nothing too good for the old lady after that, and the
captain wouldn't hear of her living anywheres but at the officers'
mess, where she sat at his right hand, and always spoke first. The
Queen of England couldn't have been treated with more respeck, and
the captain put her on the strength of the battery, and she drew
back-pay from the day she first blew into camp.
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