"But it won't hold that way."
"You say that to me, mademoiselle? I who have taught you all you know
of bandaging?"
They would wrangle a bit, and end by doing it in Sara Lee's way.
He had a fund of nonsense that he drew on, too, when a dressing was
painful. It would run like this, to an early accompaniment of groans: "Pierre, what can you put in your left hand that you cannot place in the
right? Stop grunting like a pig, and think, man!"
Pierre would give a final rumble and begin to think deeply.
"I cannot think. I--in my left hand, monsieur le capitaine?"
"In your left hand."
The little crowd in the dressing room would draw in close about the table
to listen.
"I do not know, monsieur."
"Idiot!" Henri would say. "Your right elbow, man!"
And the dressing was done.
He had an inexhaustible stock of such riddles, almost never guessed. He
would tell the answer and then laugh delightedly. And pain seemed to
leave the little room when he entered it.
It was that night that Henri disappeared.