The maid came to the door with word that the chauffeur was ready to go. “Give him half a sovereign, Bob, and my best thanks.--No, I’ll thank him myself. He brought us up from Folkestone in fine style. He was driving a motor-bus before the war and he’s having the time of his life now with no speed limit,” and he and Grant went out together to start their jovial Jehu back to Folkestone in the highest of spirits. XXXV Alma managed to make an exchange with one of the nurses at Oakdene, so that she herself could be with Con and be doing duty at the same time and yet not leave St Barnabas’s any shorter-handed than it was. It was a bit irregular, perhaps, but it was either that or giving up nursing altogether, which she had no wish to do till the war was over. But be with Con, now that she had got him back from the dead, so to speak, she vowed she would, cost what it might. “If anyone needs me it is my husband,” she told Mrs Matron, “and I’m going to stick to him no matter who else suffers.” At which the Matron smiled indulgently and arranged matters as she wished. “It is dreadful for Dr Dare,” she said. “And we must do all we can to help. I saw about it in the papers.” “He was very much put out about that. He can’t imagine where they got hold of it.” “He’s to have the D.S.O. too, I see. And I’m sure he deserves it. What is he going to do?” “He’s going on with his own work. Young Grant, who saved his life, and stuck to him all through, and brought him home, is just splendid. He’s a medical, you know, though he hadn’t quite finished his courses. He’s to stop and be Con’s hands, but I imagine his head will do good service as well. They did a certain amount of study while they were in Germany, to keep their minds off other matters, and they’re setting to work again at once.” “That’s fine--for both of them.” But before that week was out they had another surprise in a visit from Sir James Jamieson, the Harley Street brain-specialist. He was a tall, white-haired man, with a forehead like the dome of St Paul’s, only much whiter. He knew more about brains than any man in Great Britain, and, in spite of a life devoted to other people’s aberrations, was of a most genial and jovial disposition, and of a very tender heart. “Well?”--was his surprising greeting to Con. “When are you going to be ready to start work with me?” And Con gazed at him in incredulous amazement, behind which sprang up and fluttered a wild incredible hope. Sir James, he knew, loved a joke. But he was the last man in the world to spin a joke against a man left handless against the world. “Do you mean it, sir?” gasped Con, shaken out of his natural politeness by so stupendous an instant levelling of all the barriers he had seen in front of him.