This was a rude word. It was one he was rather fond of using. A thorn had scratched him mercilessly, drawing blood.
“Look here!” he cried, loudly. “Here’s a pretty business. My hand’s disfigured for life!”
She ran to his side, her face full of the prettiest sympathy.
“Oh! You poor thing!” she murmured. “But it’s only a scratch!”
“Only a scratch! Come, I like that! The most awful cases of blood-poisoning have been set up by a scratch. I may be dead in three days! Don’t you know that? Look at the blood! Why, it’s horrible!”
She drew out the daintiest handkerchief, and dipping it in a cool spring of water that bubbled in a nook of the old rose-covered wall, bathed the wounded hand gently, though her face was dimpled all over with smiles.
“‘Outward displays of emotion should always be suppressed,’” she said, in a soft small voice that shook with restrained laughter. “‘The brave man hides his wound’--doesn’t he?” Here she peeped up at him in the most fascinating manner. “‘Certain things,’--like scratches--‘are taken for granted and it is not necessary to dwell on them!’ Isn’t that right? There!” And she tied the handkerchief deftly round the “disfigured” hand. “It will be all right in a very little while.”
“Not at all!” said the Philosopher, drearily, with almost a wail. “It won’t be all right--it will be all wrong! _You_ call it a scratch. You women never pay attention to anything that’s really serious, though you make no end of a fuss over trifles. This is a positive scar! and it’s most painful--most painful, I tell you! Why, it’s quite hot and throbbing!”
“Is it? I’m so sorry! But,--do think of Napoleon’s march to Moscow!”
“What’s that to do with it?” he demanded, sharply.
“Well!--the poor soldiers were starved and frozen to death,” she said, “and you are only scratched by a rose thorn. Of course the march to Moscow happened a long time ago--but _that_ doesn’t matter!--you ought to feel it just as much--so much that your scratch should seem nothing but purest joy if you had the _right_ sort of sentiment.”
A reluctant smile overspread his face and presently shone so broadly that in spite of his being a Philosopher he became almost good-looking.
“Don’t play!” he urged. “I’m in earnest--I am really!”