’Well, don’t you see, one must take care of something smaller than oneself. I can’t explain, little ’un, only it’s in one’s blood, and your going to the hospital like that——’ ’Hurt you?’ ’Well, darling, if you make me say it, yes, a little bit.’ ’I wish that I were dead and buried.’ ’The bug always makes a chap feel like that, Meg.’ ’It isn’t the bug,’ I answered, and cried against his sleeve. ’Oh, could you stop feeling hurt?’ ’It depends how good you’re to be in future,’ said the giant, grinning. ’Will you do all the things I want you to, the next few days? Will you be a doormat just for once and let me trample on you because you’ve got the bug?’ ’Yes,’ I said meekly. ’Oh, my angel,’ exclaimed my brother in great amazement, ’I do feel frightfully worried about you, I’m perfectly certain you’ll be dead in the morning.’ So the list includes a nurse, no letters till I’m told I may, ’a willing spirit’ as to letting the doctor decide when I am to get up, and millions of etcs. When I tell you that I took the whole lot ’lying down,’ you will know to what deeps that bug has brought me. So I am a doormat, and Ross tramples on me. One day Toby came to see me when I was feeling extra specially ill. Ross sent for him, I found out afterwards. And when he went away and Ross came back into my room he said,— ’Oh, Meg, you look heaps better, your eyes are shining so,—why, darling!’ For the tears and smiles were all mixed up. But I couldn’t tell him why just then, only Toby said he thought the stork might fly into my house again some day if I were careful. *CHAPTER XXVIII* The garden has been a place of sweet delights the last ten days. The pear-trees are veiled in bloom, the pink almonds fully out, and the gorse a golden glory. I think my dear Dame Nature comes every night and makes some scent for me. I do not see her though, because I have to go to sleep so early since I became a doormat. But when I am carried down into the garden in the morning the air is warm and sweet, and I lie out under the fir-tree all day long, gradually getting stronger and thinking lovely secret things. On Tuesday it was so funny and yet pathetic. Sam went before his M.O. and Ross for his last and final Board. He got home first and was tired but radiant, because he had been passed and might expect his orders any day. He was standing by my chair talking to me when the gate clicked and Sam came in, and Ross hailed him as a man and brother. ’Well, what luck, Sam?’ ’Oh, all right, sir, passed all right.’ ’What priceless luck, Sam; did they pull your knee about a lot?’ ’Did a bit, sir,’ said Sam, looking very fagged I thought. ’Hurt at all?’ ’Hardly at all, sir.’ ’If it hurt _at all_ they oughtn’t to have passed you,’ said Ross, the officer, careful for his men. ’I shall send you back and say that you’ve been humbugging.’ ’I don’t think you will send me back,’ grinned the Hickley Woods.