He got to his feet slowly, grasped his two stout hickory canes and limped across the room to the couch, showing as he went a pitiful weakness in the tall figure, whose lines still suggested the martial bearing which it had not long ago presented, and which it might never present again.  Captain Rayburn sat down close beside Celia and took her hand.

“In one thing I made a misstatement,” he said, softly.  “They’re not imaginary battles that the colonel lies fighting in the hospital tent.  They’re real enough.”

There was a short silence; then Celia spoke unsteadily from the depths of her pillow: 

“Uncle Ray, were you ever mean enough to be jealous?”

The captain looked quickly at the fair head on the pillow.  “Jealous?” said he, without a hint of surprise in his voice.  “Why, yes—­jealous of my colonel, my lieutenants, my orderlies, my privates, my doctors, my nurses—­jealous of the very Filipino prisoners themselves—­because they all had legs and could walk.”

“Oh, I know—­I don’t mean that!” cried Celia, “Of course you envied everybody who could walk.  Poor Uncle Ray!  But you weren’t small enough to mind because the officers under you had got your chance?”

“Wasn’t I, though?  Well, maybe I wasn’t,” said the captain, speaking low.  “Perhaps I didn’t lie and grind my teeth when they told me about the gallant work Lieutenant Garretson had done with my men at Balangiga.  A mere boy, Garretson!  The whole world applauded it.  If I’d not been knocked out so soon it would have been my name that would have gone into history.  Yes, I chewed that to shreds many a sleepless night, and hated the fellow for getting my chance.”

Captain Rayburn drew a long breath, while his fingers relaxed for an instant; and it was Celia’s hand which tightened over his.

“But I got past that,” he said, quietly.  “It came to me all at once that Garretson and the other fellows in active service weren’t the only ones with chances before them.  I had mine—­a different commission from the one I had coveted, to be sure, but a broader one, with infinite possibilities, and no fear of missing further promotion if I earned it.”

There was a little stillness after that.  When the captain looked down at Celia again he found her eyes full of pity, but this time it was not pity for herself.  He comprehended instantly.

“No, I don’t need it, dear,” he said, very gently.  “I’ve learned some things already in the hospital tent I wouldn’t have missed for a year’s pay.  And you, who are to be only temporarily on the sick-leave list, you don’t need to mind that the little second lieutenant—­”

But the second lieutenant was rushing into the room, bearing on a plate a great puffy, round loaf, brown and spicy.

“Look,” she cried, “at my steamed brown bread!  I’ve tried it four times and slumped it every time.  Now Fieldsy has shown me what was the matter—­I hadn’t flour enough.  Fieldsy is a dear—­and so are you!”