He was everywhere in
the little house, elbowing his way among the men with his cheery
nonsense, bantering the weary ones until they smiled, carrying hot water
for Sara Lee and helping her now and then with a bad dressing.
"If you would do it in this fashion, mademoiselle," he would say, "with
one turn of the bandage over the elbow--"
"But it won't hold that way."
"You say that to me, mademoiselle? I who have taught you all you know
of bandaging?"
They would wrangle a bit, and end by doing it in Sara Lee's way.
He had a fund of nonsense that he drew on, too, when a dressing was
painful. It would run like this, to an early accompaniment of groans:
"Pierre, what can you put in your left hand that you cannot place in the
right? Stop grunting like a pig, and think, man!"
Pierre would give a final rumble and begin to think deeply.
"I cannot think. I--in my left hand, _monsieur le capitaine_?"
"In your left hand."
The little crowd in the dressing room would draw in close about the table
to listen.
"I do not know, monsieur."
"Idiot!" Henri would say. "Your right elbow, man!"
And the dressing was done.
He had an inexhaustible stock of such riddles, almost never guessed.
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