The Seed of Empire by Fred M. White

Ginger lay at full length in his bed gazing dreamily at the ceiling and trying to reconstruct his shattered universe and bring the world into proper focus. He had not the least notion where he was, and there was still enough of the casual left in him to render him utterly indifferent so far as that was concerned. At any rate, he was alive, and that was something to go on with. Jut for the moment when he was lifted out of the ambulance a whiff of consciousness had come to him, and he had realised that he was amongst friends. He had grasped the fact, too, that he was entirely out of his element, and that he was in contact with a class of people who had hitherto been outside his social outlook; hence his profuse apologies for the trouble he was causing.

He had been looking into a pair of friendly eyes, blue-grey eyes full of sweetness and sympathy; he had been listening to a voice, very sympathetic; and then gentle hands had lifted him from the Red Cross wagon, and he had been placed in a cool white bed. Then a man was looking down at him, a keen-faced man with a humorous smile and a pair of hands so gentle that Ginger could scarcely feel them. Away somewhere in the distance a voice was speaking, and Ginger rather gathered that he himself was the object of a discussion.