"They look nice," admitted Aunt Jane. "They're some Mr. Medfield sent--they came from his garden." Her tone was quiet and businesslike--there was no nonsense about those roses. She looked at them impersonally. "I saw it was his card." Dr. Carmon's hand motioned with the card and dropped it to the desk. He might almost have been said to fling it from him--as if it were a challenge. "Who did he send them to?" he asked. "Why--to me!" said Aunt Jane. She tried her best to look commonplace and unconcerned--as if she had been receiving roses all her life--as if she had large bunches of them every day, flaming away there on her desk. Dr. Carmon's glance twinkled across the roses--to the placid face. "Humph!" he said. "How is Number 16?" asked Aunt Jane. "Fine!" Dr. Carmon's face lighted with it. He forgot roses--"He's going to pull through all right--I think." "That's good! I kind of reckoned he'd come through." She had turned a leisurely glance to the door. The nurse stood there. "I can't--" she began. "Oh--you're here! I looked everywhere for you!" "Yes, I'm here. I've been here quite a spell," said Aunt Jane. The nurse withdrew and Dr. Carmon and Aunt Jane and the roses were left alone. He looked suspiciously and grudgingly at the roses and shrugged his shoulders and turned away. He took his hat. "I want you to look in on Number 16--sometime later." There was no "please" about the request--or "will you kindly." But Aunt Jane understood. "I was planning to go in by and by--along about four o'clock," she said kindly. "That's the time he'll need somebody most, I guess!" Dr. Carmon looked again at the roses. "I shall want Suite A, Friday--for a new patient," he said abruptly. Aunt Jane's mouth opened--and closed. "Medfield's well enough to go," said Dr. Carmon. He nodded to the roses--as if they knew of Herman Medfield's health. "He'll be better off at home!" he said shortly--and shot out the door. Aunt Jane gazed after him, a minute. She took up the card from the desk and held it off and looked at it severely and shook it a little--as if it might have known better--and dropped it into a small drawer behind the roses and locked the drawer--and put the key in her pocket. Then she turned off the lights and left the room. And the great bunch of roses that had flamed up so bravely, lost their color in the dark. Perhaps they went to sleep. All night the fragrance of the roses stole out into the room and filled it--as if little flitting dreams of roses came and went there in the dark. XXXVII Things were moving happily in Suite A. Herman Medfield had been awake and stirring since daybreak. He had written one or two notes in his own hand, and had dictated a longer one to Miss Canfield. It was addressed to Thomas Dalton, and it lay on the stand beside his chair in the window. The girl had grasped its import swiftly, as she took down the crisp words.