It was on her second visit that she was attracted to a small cot, from which a pinched little face with wondrous brown eyes looked up appealingly.
"How do you do?" Blue Bonnet said, dropping down beside the cot and taking the thin hand on the coverlet in her own.
"How do _you_ do?" came the laconic answer.
"Nicely, thank you."
"Did you bring paper dolls?"
"Yes."
A look of keen disappointment came over the wan face on the pillow.
"I hate "em! I hoped maybe you had soldiers. Everything here"s for girls!"
"Now, isn"t that strange," Blue Bonnet said, untying a parcel with haste. "I brought things for girls last time--seemed sort of natural to buy dolls and dishes, being a girl, but this time I brought the very things you wanted. Soldiers!"
The brown eyes grew round with delight.
"For me? All for me?"
The little hands went out eagerly.
"You may play with them all you like. Perhaps you will want to pa.s.s them on to some other little boy when you tire of them."
"I sha"n"t never tire of "em. I just love "em. Oh, ain"t they grand!
Why, there"s a whole lot, ain"t they?"
"A regiment," Blue Bonnet said, delighted with the child"s enthusiasm.
"And horses! Soldiers must be well mounted, of course!"
The boy was upright in bed now, his face aglow with excitement.
Blue Bonnet made a pillow into a background and put the soldiers in a row before the child. The next moment he was oblivious of her presence.
"Horses!" he said. "Horses! Gee!"
A laugh, utterly out of proportion to the wasted little body from which it emerged, rang through the ward.
"I"m afraid you are getting too excited," Blue Bonnet cautioned. "I"ll have to take them away if you make yourself ill with them."
The boy caught up as many of the soldiers and horses as he could, and held to them tightly.
"You can"t get "em," he said, and the brown eyes flashed. "I wouldn"t give "em up to n.o.body."
"You don"t have to give them up. You mustn"t get excited, that"s all.
It"s bad for sick people; it gives them fever."
"Aw--I gets fever anyway. I"m used to it. I"m "bercular! It"s in my knee."
"A tubercular knee?"
The boy nodded, and thrusting a pitifully thin leg from beneath the covers, showed a knee carefully bandaged. Blue Bonnet hastily covered it, asking his name by way of changing the subject.
"Gabriel," came the quick answer.
"Gabriel! What a beautiful name! Gabriel--what?"
"You couldn"t say all of it if I tell you. It"s Jewish."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "GABRIEL LOOKED UP IN DISDAIN."]
"Let me try. Perhaps I"ll surprise you. Then I"ll tell you mine. I have a queer name, too."
"Tell yours first."
"All right. It"s Blue Bonnet. Blue Bonnet Ashe."
The child laughed again; less loudly this time.
"It"s pretty, though. I like it."
"Why do you like it?"
The eyes half closed for a moment, straying away from the soldiers.
"I don"t know. Kind of makes me think of flowers."
"It _is_ the name of a flower," Blue Bonnet said, surprised at his intuition. "A very pretty flower that grows down in Texas."
But Texas meant nothing to Gabriel. He was busy again, lining up his soldiers for battle.
"They"ll march this way," he said, half to himself--"and these this way.
Then they"ll fight."
"Oh, I wouldn"t let them fight, if I were you. Soldiers don"t fight any more--not here in America. This is a land of peace."
Gabriel looked up in disdain.
"Aw--quit yer kiddin"," he paid. "What"s soldiers fer?"
Blue Bonnet was not ready with a reply. "You haven"t told me your other name," she said. "You took advantage of me. I told you mine."
"It ain"t pretty! The kids call me Gaby. That"s enough. Call me that."
"How old are you?"
"Nine--comin" next August."