Page:Women Wanted.djvu/312

 that was the writhing caricature of the agony that had slashed it. A sickening sensation of nausea swept over the sergeant. God in heaven, he thought, then how much was the matter with him?

A woman was coming down the room, pausing now and then by the side of a cherry red comforter. By the waving mass of her red brown hair, she was a woman, but not such as the sergeant had seen before. His mother wore a black dress and his wife's, he remembered, was a blue silk for Sundays and at home, why he supposed it was calico beneath their gingham aprons. But this woman was in khaki as surely as ever he had been.

Now she reached his bed. She stood looking down on him with an air of proprietorship, almost of possession. "How are you, this morning, Sergeant Jones?" she asked, with firm professional fingers reaching authoritatively for the pulse in his left wrist. Without waiting for a reply, she was proceeding calmly to turn back the covers. "We have a little work to do here, I think," she said, gently grasping—could the sergeant be sure—it seemed to be his left leg. "The dressings, you know," she was saying easily.

"But, but, 'er—the doctor," he gasped in protest.

"I am the doctor," she answered.

Of the female of the species, Sergeant Jones of course had heard. He had never before seen one. "I'll be—" he started to say. But he wasn't. Then he would have jerked away. But he couldn't. "I want a doctor, a real one," he blurted out angrily.