e ranks."

"There you go again, sir," cried the doctor. "Always grumbling. Look
at you both; wounds healing up."

"Ugh!" cried Denham. "Mine are horrid." I winced again.

"Your muscles are recovering their tone."

"I can hardly move without pain," groaned Denham. I screwed up my face
in sympathy.

"Your bruises dying out."

"Doctor!" shouted Denham, "do you think I haven't looked at myself? I'm
horrible."

This time I groaned.

"How do you know? You haven't got a looking-glass, surely?"

"No; but I've seen my wretched face in a bucket of water," cried Denham.

"Bah! Conceited young puppy! And compared notes, too, both of you,
I'll be bound."

"Of course we have, lying about here with nothing to do but suffer and
fret. You don't seem to do us a bit of good."

"What!" cried the doctor. "Why, if it hadn't been for me you'd have had
no faces at all worth looking at. Most likely--There, there, there! I
won't get into a temper with you both, and tell you what might have
happened."

"Both would have died, and a good job too," cried Denham bitterly.

"Come, come!" said the doctor gently; "don't talk like that. I know, I
know. It has been very hard to bear, and you both have been rather slow
at getting strong again. But be reasonable. This hasn't been a proper
hospital, and it isn't now a convalescent home, where I could coax you
both back into health and strength. I've no appliances or medicines
worth speaking about, and I must confess that the diet upon which I am
trying to feed you up is not perfect."

"Perfect, Val!" cried Denham. "Just listen to him. Everything is
horrible."

"Quite right, my dear boy," said the doctor; "it is."

"The bread--Ugh! It always tastes of burnt bones and skin and grease."

"Yes," said the doctor, with a sigh; "but that's all the fuel we have
for heating the oven now the wagons are burned."

"Then the soup, or beef-tea, or whatever you call it. I don't know
which is worst--that which is boiled up in a pannikin or the nauseous
mess made by soaking raw beef in a bucket of water."

"But it is warmed afterwards, my dear boy," said the doctor, "and it is
extremely nutritious."

"Ugh!" shuddered Denham. "What stuff for a poor fellow recovering from
wounds! I can't and I won't take any more of it."

The doctor smiled, and looked hard at the grumbler.

"Won't you, Denham?" he said. "Oh yes, you will; and you're going to
have bits of steak to-day, friz