"I'm nearly discouraged," she confessed, finally. "Everything is so different to what I thought it would be, and I'm so weak and ineffective. The medical supplies I brought are nearly all gone, and I've learned what hard work it is fitting up hospitals when there's nothing to fit them up with. I can't teach these people to take care of themselves--they seem to consider precautions against disease as a confession of cowardice. Summer, the yellow-fever season, is here and--well, I'm getting disheartened. Disheartened and hungry! They're new sensations to me." She sighed. "I imagined I was going to work wonders--I thought I was going to be a Florence Nightingale, and the men were going to idolize me."
"Don't they?" Judson demanded.
"No. That is--not in exactly the way I expected."
"They all want to marry her," O'Reilly explained.
"Insolent bunch!" growled the captain. Then he swallowed hard and said, "But for that matter, so do I."
"Why, Joe!" Norine cast a startled glance at the big fellow.
"It's a fact," he asserted, doggedly. "I might as well declare myself here and now. There's always a gang of eavesdroppers hanging around you."
"He means you, Leslie," O'Reilly said. "Hadn't you better take a walk?"
Branch rolled a hostile eye at the artilleryman, and his lip curled. "I'll not move. When he gets through, I'll propose."
"How silly you boys can be!" Norine laughed. "I dare say the others are joking too, but--"
"Joking?" O'Reilly grinned. "Not at all. I'm the only single man in camp who isn't in love with you. When you arrived this morning there was a general stampede for the river. I'll bet the fish in this stream will taste of soap for years to come."
As if to point O'Reilly's words at the moment appeared Colonel Lopez, shaved blood-raw and clad in a recently laundered uniform which was still damp. The three Americans rose to salute him, but discipline was lax and he waved them back to their seats. Other eyes than his, too, had noted Miss Evans's reappearance after her siesta, for Major Ramos, Norine's escort from headquarters, soon joined the group, and he was followed by two Camagueyan lieutenants.
These latter were youths of some family standing. Before the war they had been dandies, and they still had an excellent opinion of their physical charms, but, unfortunately, they spoke no English and hence their attentions to Norine had been somewhat vague and pointless. They possessed eloquent eyes, however, and now they languished melting glances upon her, the meaning of which she had no difficulty in translating.
"We've been talking about food," Leslie Branch advised his commanding officer. "Miss Evans isn't a burning patriot like the rest of us, and so of course she can't share our ravenous appetite for beef cooked and eaten on the hoof."