"Do!
I'm good at wounds. Come over here. No--stay there. I'll come over to
you."
She did, bestriding the back of the middle seat and dropping at his
side. The magnetic fingers again touched his; he felt her warm breath
on his neck as she bent toward him.
"It's nothing," he said, hastily, more agitated by the treatment than
the wound.
"Give me your flask," she responded, without heeding. A stinging
sensation as she bathed the edges of the cut with the spirit brought
him back to common sense again. "There," she said, skillfully
extemporizing a bandage from her handkerchief and a compress from his
cravat. "Now, button your coat over your chest, so, and don't take
cold." She insisted upon buttoning it for him; greater even than the
feminine delight in a man's strength is the ministration to his
weakness. Yet, when this was finished, she drew a little away from him
in some embarrassment--an embarrassment she wondered at, as his skin
was finer, his touch gentler, his clothes cleaner, and--not to put too
fine a point upon it--he exhaled an atmosphere much sweeter than
belonged to most of the men her boyish habits had brought her in
contact with--not excepting her own father.
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