A great tear rolled down the scarred cheek of the young soldier and splashed on the signature. Then something happened that made him sit up very straight in his cot and stretch out a shaking hand for the night nurse. She was by his side in a moment.
"Look! Look! The ink is not dry yet. See where that tear dropped! Dry ink would not float off like that!" He turned the sheet over. It was a chart.
"But you--you--little Fairy Godmother! Who is he?"
"That's my official name. Mary Grubb was the girl whose place I got with the Red Cross. Do you know, you hurt my feelings terribly when you said my fist was rotten?"
And Stephen Scott, holding the little stained and roughened hand in his, wondered that he ever could have made such a break.
"Thank God, you are just one girl, after all!" he cried.
But the night nurse wished that there were two of her for a while at least: one to stay by the bedside of the convalescent American and one to make out the charts that must be got ready for the morning rounds of the surgeon in charge.
"Ahem!" said Billie, rapping for order as the girls began all at once to say what they thought of "Fairy Godmothers Wanted." The one with the burning plot began rattling her paper in preparation of the turn she hoped for.
"First general impressions are in order! One at a time, please! You, Miss Oldham, you tell us how it strikes you."
"We'll come to the 'buts' later," was the stern mandate of the chairman of the day.
"The idea! I think it was just sweet," from the gentle Alabamian.
"I got kind of mixed in the middle and couldn't tell which was the nurse and which Polly Nelson," declared one who had evidently gone off into a cataleptic fit, no doubt dreaming of a story she meant to write some day.
"I never, never could love a man who had deceived me," sighed the sentimental one with big eyes and a little mouth.
"Personal predilections not valuable as criticism," said Billie sternly.
Many and various were the opinions expressed. Molly diligently and meekly took notes, agreeing heartily with the ones who thought it was too long.
"Where must I cut it?" she asked eagerly.
"Cut out all the letters!" suggested Lilian.
"How could she? It is all letters," asked Billie, whose chair was becoming a burden as she felt she must get into the discussion.