He studied the nurses' charts with an avid interest. He knew all there was to know about temperature, respiration and nourishment; and developing a sudden sort of lordly understanding therefrom, he harangued the engineer about the steam heat, he cautioned the superintendent about noises, and he held many futile arguments with God about the weather. Something told him a dozen times a day, however, that he was in the way, that he was "a regular Marceline," and that if Brady Thorpe had any sense at all he would order him out of the house! He began to resent the speed with which George's convalescence was marked. He was enjoying himself so immensely in his new environment that he hated to think of going back to the old and hitherto perfect order of existence. When Braden Thorpe and Dr. Bates declared one day that George would be able to go home in a week or ten days, he experienced a surprising and absolutely inexplicable sinking of the heart. He tried to persuade them that it would be a mistake to send the poor fellow out inside of a month or six weeks. That was the trouble with doctors, he said: they haven't any sense. Suppose, he argued, that George were to catch a cold—why, the damp, spring weather would raise the dickens—Anne's house was a drafty old barn of a place, improperly heated,—and any fool could see that if George _did_ have a relapse it would go mighty hard with him. Subsequently he sounded the nurses, severally, on the advisability of abandoning the poor, weak young fellow before he was safely out of the woods, and the nurses, who were tired of the case, informed him that the way George was eating he soon would be as robust as a dock hand. An appeal to Mrs. Tresslyn brought a certain degree of hope. That lady declared, quite bitterly, that inasmuch as her son did not seem inclined to return to _her_ home he might do a great deal worse than to remain where he was, and it was some time before Simmy grasped the full significance of the remark. He remembered hearing Lutie say that she was going to take George home with her as soon as he was able to be moved!