There were hospitals up the road preparing and being prepared for the
Indian wounded. In one of these lay a man of, say, a Biluch regiment,
sorely hit. Word had come from his colonel in France to the colonel’s
wife in England that she should seek till she found that very man and
got news from his very mouth—news to send to his family and village. She
found him at last, and he was very bewildered to see her there, because
he had left her and her child on the verandah of the bungalow, long and
long ago, when he and his colonel and the regiment went down to take
ship for the war. How had she come? Who had guarded her during her
train-journey of so many days? And, above all, how had the baba endured
that sea which caused strong men to collapse? Not till all these matters
had been cleared up in fullest detail did Greatheart on his cot permit
his colonel’s wife to waste one word on his own insignificant concerns.
And that she should have wept filled him with real trouble. Truly, this
is the war of ‘Our Raj!’