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The Nurse brought the pepsin and a medicine glass and the Staff Doctor swallowed and grimaced.

“You were saying,” said the Nurse timidly–for, the stress being over, he was Staff again and she was a Junior and not even entitled to a Senior’s privileges, such as returning occasional badinage.

“Every atom of him is going to crave it. He’s wanting it now. He has been used to it for years.” The Nurse was white to the lips, but steady. “He is not to have it?”

“Not a drop while he is here. When he gets out it is his own affair again, but while he’s here–by-the-way, you’ll have to watch the orderly. He’ll bribe him.”

“I don’t think so, doctor. He is a gentleman.”

“Pooh! Of course he is. I dare say he’s a gentleman when he’s drunk too; but he’s a drinker–a habitual drinker.”

The Nurse went back into the room and found Billy Grant sitting in a chair, with the book he had been reading on the floor and his face buried in his hands.

“I’m awfuly sorry!” he said, not looking up. “I heard what he said. He’s right, you know.”

“I’m sorry. And I’m afraid this is a place where I cannot help.”

She put her hand on his head, and he brought it down and held it between his.

“Two or three times,” he said, “when things were very bad with me, you let me hold your hand, and we got past somehow–didn’t we?”

She closed her eyes, remembering the dawn when, to soothe a dying man, in the presence of the mission preacher, she had put her hand in his. Billy Grant thought of it too.

“Now you know what you’ve married,” he said bitterly. The bitterness was at himself of course. “If–if you’ll sit tight I have a fighting chance to make a man of myself; and after it’s over we’ll fix this thing for you so you will forget it ever happened. And I—- Don’t take your hand away. Please!”

“I was feeling for my handkerchief,” she explained.

“Have I made you cry again?”

“Again?’

“I saw you last night in your room. I didn’t intend to; but I was trying to stand, and—-“

She was very dignified at this, with her eyes still wet, and tried unsuccessfully to take her hand away.

“If you are going to get up when it is forbidden I shall ask to be relieved.”

“You wouldn’t do that!”

“Let go of my hand.”

“You wouldn’t do that!!”

“Please! The head nurse is coming.”

He freed her hand then and she wiped her eyes, remembering the “perfect, silent, reliable, fearless, emotionless machine.”

The head of the training school came to the door of the pavilion, but did not enter. The reason for this was twofold: first, she had confidence in the Nurse; second, she was afraid of contagion–this latter, of course, quite sub rosa, in view of the above quotation.

The Head Nurse was a tall woman in white, and was so starchy that she rattled like a newspaper when she walked.

“Good morning,” she said briskly. “Have you sent over the soiled clothes?” Head nurses are always bothering about soiled clothes; and what becomes of all the nailbrushes, and how can they use so many bandages.

“Yes, Miss Smith.”

“Meals come over promptly?”

“Yes, Miss Smith.”

“Getting any sleep?”

“Oh, yes, plenty–now.”

Miss Smith peered into the hallway, which seemed tidy, looked at the Nurse with approval, and then from the doorstep into the patient’s room, where Billy Grant sat. At the sight of him her eyebrows rose.

“Good gracious!” she exclaimed. “I thought he was older than that!”

“Twenty-nine,” said the Nurse; “twenty-nine last Fourth of July.”

“H’m!” commented the Head Nurse. “You evidently know! I had no idea you were taking care of a boy. It won’t do. I’ll send over Miss Hart.”

The Nurse tried to visualise Billy Grant in his times of stress clutching at Miss Hart’s hand, and failed.

“Jenks is here, of course,” she said, Jenks being the orderly.

The idea of Jenks as a chaperon, however, did not appeal to the head nurse. She took another glance through the window at Billy Grant, looking uncommonly handsome and quite ten years younger since the shave, and she set her lips.