“What I have told them, of course. Do you know, Dick, I sometimes feel as though I had no business to be so well and rich and happy among so many sufferers. It seems as though they must hate me, or, at any rate, feel that I can’t sympathise with them. And then, when you were shut up in Fort Rahmat-Ullah, and uncle and I were so fearfully anxious, I really couldn’t go on just as usual, and I told the women about you, and they _were_ so nice. Of their own accord they asked the clergyman, who comes and holds a service in the wards on Sundays, to mention your name in the prayers, and they watched the papers for every scrap of news about you. When at last we heard how you had got through the enemy and brought help, I took the paper to the hospital, but I couldn’t read a bit. I simply broke down and cried like a great baby, and the women were in a dreadful state of anxiety. At last I gave the account to one of them, and she read it aloud in a high, cracked voice, making the most horrible hash of the names, and the rest all cried too. They have regarded you as their personal property ever since, and when they heard of all your honours, they were as much pleased as I was. ‘Your brother ’ave gort permoted, miss!’ was what they all called out to me when I came in one day, and I never had such a piece of work in my life as when I tried to explain to them what brevet rank was. I’m afraid even now they are under the impression that you have been very badly treated, and defrauded of the promotion you ought to have received, and they sympathise with you very deeply. Several of them have pictures of you, cut out of the illustrated papers, folded up in their lockers, and bring them out to show people, and all the new patients are carefully instructed in the history of the presiding genius. ‘That’s our Miss North’s brother,’ the old ones tell them, and then all the details follow. Now, Dick, you will come, won’t you?” “If you really want me, old girl,” and Dick threw down his paper without a murmur. “I feel as if I owed you something for the horrible scare you got when you heard we were cut off, and so I’ll do violence to my natural modesty to the extent of coming and exhibiting myself to your old women.”