Brandon of the Engineers

"And who's Mignonne?"

"La, la!" said the woman soothingly. "C'est ma mignonne. But you jess

go to sleep again."

"How can I go to sleep when I'm not sleepy and you won't tell me what I

want to know?" Dick grumbled, but the woman raised her hand and began to

sing an old plantation song.

"I'm not a child," he protested weakly. "But that's rather nice."

Closing his eyes, he tried to think. His nurse was not a Spanish mulatto,

as her dark dress suggested. It was more likely that she came from

Louisiana, where the old French stock had not died out; but Dick felt

puzzled. She had spoken, obviously with affection, of ma mignonne; but

he was sure the singer was no child of hers. There was no Creole accent

in that clear voice, and the steps he heard were light. The feet that had

passed his door were small and arched; not flat like a negro's. He had

seen feet of the former kind slip on an iron staircase and brush, in

pretty satin shoes, across a lawn on which the moonlight fell. Besides, a

girl whose skin was fair and whose movements were strangely graceful had

flitted about his room. While he puzzled over this he went to sleep and

on waking saw with a start of pleasure Jake sitting near his bed. His

nurse had gone.

"Hullo!" he said. "I'm glad you've come. There are a lot of things I want

to know."

"The trouble is I've been ordered not to tell you much. It's a comfort to

see you looking brighter."

"I feel pretty well. But can you tell me where I am and how I got there?"

"Certainly. We'll take the last question first. Somebody tore off a

shutter and we carried you on it. I guess you know you got a dago's knife

between your ribs."

"I seem to remember something like that," said Dick; who added with

awkward gratitude: "I believe the brutes would have killed me if you

hadn't been there."

"It was a pretty near thing. Does it strike you as curious that while you

made yourself responsible for me I had to take care of you?"

"You did so, anyhow," Dick remarked with feeling. "But go on."

"Somebody brought a Spanish doctor, who said you couldn't be moved much

and must be taken into the nearest house, so we brought you here."

"Where is 'here'? That's what I want to know?"

"My orders are not to let you talk. We've changed our positions now;

you've got to listen. For all that, you ought to be thankful you're not

in the Santa Brigida hospital, which was too far away. It's three hundred

years old and smells older. Felt as if you could bake bricks in it, and

no air gets in."