“I am very grateful to you all,” he went on after a moment’s pause, “for taking so much trouble about me— especially to you, Joan, for somehow or other I realised your presence even when I was off my head. I don’t know how you occupy yourself generally, but I am sure you are fond of fresh air. It is uncommonly good of you to mew yourself up here just to look after me.” “Don’t talk like that, sir. It is my business.” “Your business! Why is it your business? You are not a professional nurse, are you?” “No, sir, though they offered to pay me to-day,” and she flushed with indignation as she said it. “Well, don’t be angry if they did. Why shouldn’t you have a week’s wage for a week’s work? I suppose you like to earn something, like the rest of us.” “Because I don’t choose to,” answered Joan, tapping the floor with her foot: “I’d rather starve. It is my fault that you got into this trouble, and it is an insult to offer me money because I am helping to nurse you out of it.” “Well, there is no need to excite yourself about it. I have no doubt they thought that you would take a different view, and really I cannot see why you should not. Tell me what happened on the night that they gave me up: it interests me.” Then in a few graphic words Joan sketched the scene so vividly, that Henry seemed to see himself lying unconscious on the bed, and sinking fast into death while the doctors watched and whispered round him. “Were you there all the time?” he asked curiously. “Most of it, till I was of no further use and could bear no more.” “What did you do then?” “I went to my room.” “And what did you do there? Go to sleep?” “Go to sleep! I—I—cried my heart out. I mean— that I said my prayers.” “It is very kind of you to take so much interest in me,” he answered, in a half bantering voice; then, seeming to understand that she was very much in earnest, he changed the subject, asking “And what did the others do?” “They were all in the bar-parlour; they waited there till it grew dark, and then they waited on in the dark, for they thought that presently they would be called in to see you die. At last the change came, and Dr. Childs left you to tell them when he was sure. I heard his step, and followed him. I had no business to do it, but I could not help myself. He went into the room and stood still, trying to make out who was in it, and you might have heard a pin drop. Then he spoke to your mother, and said that through the mercy of Heaven he believed that you would live.” “Yes,” said Henry; “and what did they say then?” “Nobody said anything, so far as I could hear; only Miss Levinger screamed and dropped on the floor in a faint.” “Why did she do that?” asked Henry. “I suppose that they had been keeping her there without any dinner, and her nerves were upset.”