“Well,” said the doctor, a few weeks afterwards, as Jim was going home on his coveted sick-leave, “Mr. Thomas Carlyle calls fibs wind-bags.  If that singular remedy would work to such a charm with all my men, I’d tell lies with impunity.  Good by, Jim, and the best of good luck to you.”

“The same to you, Doctor, and I hope you may always find a friend in need, to lie for you.  Good by, and God bless you!” wringing his hand hard,—­“and now, hurrah for home!”

“Hurrah it is!” cried the little surgeon after him, as, happy and proud, he limped down the ward, and turned his face towards home.

CHAPTER XXI

  “Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm.”

  Gray

Jim scarcely felt the jolting of the ambulance over the city stones, and his impatience and eagerness to get across the intervening space made dust, and heat, and weariness of travel seem but as feather weights, not to be cared for, nor indeed considered at all; though, in fact, his arm complained, and his leg ached distressingly, and he was faint and weak without confessing it long before the tiresome journey reached its end.

“No matter,” he said to himself; “it’ll be all well, or forgotten, at least, when I see Sallie once more; and so, what odds?”

The end was gained at last, and he would have gone to her fast as certain Rosinantes, yclept hackhorses, could carry him, but, stopping for a moment to consider, he thought, “No, that will never do!  Go to her looking like such a guy?  Nary time.  I’ll get scrubbed, and put on a clean shirt, and make myself decent, before she sees me.  She always used to look nice as a new pin, and she liked me to look so too; so I’d better put my best foot foremost when she hasn’t laid eyes on me for such an age.  I’m fright enough, anyway, goodness knows, with my thinness, and my old lame leg; so—­” sticking his head out of the window, and using his lungs with astonishing vigor—­“Driver! streak like lightning, will you, to the ‘Merchants’? and you shall have extra fare.”

“Hold your blab there,” growled the driver; “I ain’t such a pig yet as to take double fare from a wounded soldier.  You’ll pay me well at half-price,—­when we get where you want to go,”—­which they did soon.

“No!” said Jehu, thrusting back part of the money, “I ain’t agoin’ to take it, so you needn’t poke it out at me.  I’m all right; or, if I ain’t, I’ll make it up on the next broadcloth or officer I carry; never you fear! us fellows knows how to take care of ourselves, you’d better believe!” which statement Jim would have known to be truth, without the necessity of repetition, had he been one of the aforesaid “broadcloths,” or “officers,” and thus better acquainted with the genus hack-driver in the ordinary exercise of its profession.

As it was; he shook hands with the fellow, pocketed the surplus change, made his way into the hotel, was in his room, in his bath, under the barber’s hands, cleaned, shaved, brushed, polished, shining,—­as he himself would have declared, “in a jiffy” Then, deciding himself to be presentable to the lady of his heart, took his crutch and sallied forth, as good-looking a young fellow, spite of the wooden appendage, as any the sun shone upon in all the big city, and as happy, as it was bright.