Jimmy was contented with his solution and asked no more questions. The morning's excitement had tired him, and he lay back. Dr. Gates went to hold a whispered consultation with the nurse, and came back, looking grave.
The boy was asleep, holding the letter in his thin hands.
The visit to the hospital was a good thing for Harmony--to find some one worse off than she was, to satisfy that eternal desire of women to do something, however small, for some one else. Her own troubles looked very small to her that day as she left the hospital and stepped out into the bright sunshine.
She passed the impassive sentry, then turned and went back to him.
“Do you wish to do a very kind thing?” she asked in German.
Now the conversation of an Austrian sentry consists of yea, yea, and nay, nay, and not always that. But Harmony was lovely and the sun was moderating the wind. The sentry looked round; no one was near.
“Inside that third window is a small boy and he is very ill. I do not think--perhaps he will never be well again. Could you not, now and then, pass the window? It pleases him.”
“In America we see few of our soldiers. He likes to see you and the gun.”
“Ah, the gun!” He smiled and nodded in comprehension, then, as an officer appeared in the door of a coffee-house across the street, he stiffened into immobility and stared past Harmony into space. But the girl knew he would do as she had desired.
That day brought good luck to Harmony. The wife of one of the professors at the hospital desired English conversation at two Kronen an hour.
Peter brought the news home at noon, and that afternoon Harmony was engaged. It was little enough, but it was something. It did much more than offer her two Kronen an hour; it gave her back her self-confidence, although the immediate result was rather tragic.
The Frau Professor Bergmeister, infatuated with English and with Harmony, engaged her, and took her first two Kronen worth that afternoon. It was the day for a music-lesson. Harmony arrived five minutes late, panting, hat awry, and so full of the Frau Professor Bergmeister that she could think of nothing else.
Obedient to orders she had placed the envelope containing her fifty Kronen before the secretary as she went in. The master was out of humor. Should he, the teacher of the great Koert, be kept waiting for a chit of a girl--only, of course, he said “das Kindchen” or some other German equivalent for chit--and then have her come into the sacred presence breathless, and salute him between gasps as the Frau Professor Bergmeister?