He glanced towards the tent. Then, beckoning to
Kruger Bobs, he turned and rode away to inspect the distant
landscape.
An hour later, Kruger Bobs was squatting on the ground, a heaped
plate on his knees and a smile of rapture surrounding his smacking
lips. Near him, the three horses munched contentedly, stamping
lightly now and then and whisking their tails to drive off the
buzzing flies. Outside the door of the tent, Alice Mellen sat on a
bench, with Carew at her side and Weldon sprawling lazily on the
ground at her feet.
"Twenty-seven inside," she told them. "It is mostly enteric and S.
C., men who have been sent here from Bloemfontein. Their hospitals
are overcrowded. We have both sorts here, you know."
"Nursing Boers?" Carew asked, disapprovingly.
"Why not? They are men, plucky men, too, some of them. I rather like
the race. Anyway, it makes an interesting mixture. We have had to
put them all together, and they get on capitally, exchanging stories
and gossip and sympathy like men of the same company. One of them, a
Boer,--" she hesitated for the right word; then she adopted the
vernacular of the service--"went out, the other day; and, among his
mourners, the sincerest ones were the two London Tommies in the two
next beds.
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