I found out afterward that she was the nurse whom McMeekin had summoned by telegraph. What she said to McMeekin or what he said to her I cannot remember. Of my own actions during the day I can say nothing certainly except this: I asked McMeekin, not once or twice, but every time I saw him, how long it took for influenza to develop its full strength in a man who had thoroughly imbibed the infection. McMeekin either would not or could not answer this simple question. He talked vague nonsense about periods of incubation, whereas I wanted to know the earliest date at which I might expect to see him and Titherington stricken down, I hated McMeekin worse than ever for his dogged stupidity. The next day McMeekin said I was better, which showed me that Titherington was right in saying that he was no damned use as a doctor. I was very distinctly worse. I was, in fact, so bad that when the nurse insisted on arranging the bedclothes I burst into tears and sobbed afterward for many hours. That ought to have shown her that arranging bedclothes was particularly bad for me. But she was an utterly callous woman. She arranged them again at about eight o’clock and told me to go to sleep. I had not slept at all since I got the influenza and I could not sleep then, but I thought it better to pretend to sleep and I lay as still as I could. After I had been pretending for a long while, at some hour in the very middle of the night, Titherington burst into my room in a noisy way. He was in evening dress and his shirt front had a broad wrinkle across it. I have never seen a more unutterably abhorrent sight than Titherington in evening dress. The nurse rebuked him for having wakened me, which showed me that she was a fool as well as a wantonly cruel woman. I had not been asleep and any nurse who knew her business would have seen that I was only pretending. Titherington took no notice of her. He was bubbling over with something he wanted to say, and twenty nurses would not have stopped him. “We had a great meeting,” he said. “The hall was absolutely packed and the boys at the back nearly killed a man who wanted to ask questions.” “McMeekin, I hope,” I said feebly. “No. McMeekin was on the platform--mind that now--on the platform. I gave him a hint beforehand that we were thinking of calling in another man if you didn’t improve. He simply bounded on to the platform after that. It’ll be an uncommonly nasty jar for Vittie. The speaking wasn’t up to much, most of it; but I wish you’d heard the cheers when I apologized for your absence and told them you were ill in bed. It would have done you good. I wouldn’t give tuppence for Vittie’s chances of getting a dozen votes in this part of the division. We had two temperance secretaries, damned asses, to propose votes of thanks.” “For my influenza?”