"You needn't be uneasy on that score," said Hardy, casting an amused glance at his companion, "for there's plenty o' flesh left yet to keep ye goin' till you get to old Ireland. It rejoices my heart to see you beside me, thin though you are, for the report up country was that you had died on the way to Suez." "Bad luck to their reports! That's always the way of it. I do think the best way to take reports is to belaive the exact opposite o' what's towld ye, an' so ye'll come nearest the truth. It's thrue I had a close shave. Wan day I felt a sort o' light-hiddedness--as if I was a kind o' livin' balloon--and was floatin' away, whin the doctor came an' looked at me. "`He's gone,' says he. "`That's a lie!' says I, with more truth than purliteness, maybe. "An' would ye belave it?--I began to mind from that hour! It was the doctor saved me widout intindin' to--good luck to him! Anyhow he kep' me from slippin' my cable that time, but it was the good nursin' as brought me back--my blissin' on the dear ladies as give their hearts to this work all for love! By the way," continued Flynn, coughing and looking very stern, for he was ashamed of a tear or two which _would_ rise and almost overflow in spite of his efforts to restrain them--but then, you see, he was very weak! "By the way," he said, "you'll niver guess who wan o' the nurses is. Who d'ee think?--guess!" "I never _could_ guess right, Flynn." "Try." "Well, little Mrs Armstrong." "Nonsense, man! Why, she's nursin' her old father in England, I s'pose." "Miss Robinson, then?" "H'm! You might as well say the Prime Minister. How d'ee s'pose the Portsmuth Institute could git along widout _her_? No, it's our friend Mrs Drew!" "What! The wife o' the reverend gentleman as came out with us in the troop-ship?" "That same--though she's no longer the wife of the riverend gintleman, for he's dead--good man," said Flynn, in a sad voice. "I'm grieved to hear that, for he _was_ a good man. And the pretty daughter, what of her?" "That's more nor I can tell ye, boy. Sometimes her mother brings her to the hospital to let her see how they manage, but I fancy she thinks her too young yet to go in for sitch work by hersilf. Anyhow I've seen her only now an' then; but the poor widdy comes rig'lar--though I do belave she does it widout pay. The husband died of a flyer caught in the hospital a good while since. They say that lots o' young fellows are afther the daughter, for though the Drews are as poor as church rats, she's got such a swate purty face, and such innocent ways wid her, that I'd try for her mesilf av it wasn't that I've swore niver to forsake me owld grandmother."