Then, because he was really very sick and really very tired, he snuggled down into the new blessed warmth and turned his gaunt cheek to the pillow and cupped his hand for sleep like a drowsy child with its nose and mouth burrowed eagerly down into the expectant draught. But the cup did not fill.--Yet scented deep in his curved, empty, balsam-scented fingers lurked--somehow--somewhere--the dregs of a wonderful dream: Boyhood, with the hot, sweet flutter of summer woods, and the pillowing warmth of the soft, sunbaked earth, and the crackle of a twig, and the call of a bird, and the drone of a bee, and the great blue, blue mystery of the sky glinting down through a green-latticed canopy overhead. For the first time in a whole, cruel tortuous week he actually smiled his way into his morning nap. When he woke again both the sun and the Doctor were staring pleasantly into his face. "You look better!" said the Doctor. "And more than that you don't look half so 'cussed cross'." "Sure," grinned Stanton, with all the deceptive, undauntable optimism of the Just-Awakened. "Nevertheless," continued the Doctor more soberly, "there ought to be somebody a trifle more interested in you than the janitor to look after your food and your medicine and all that. I'm going to send you a nurse." "Oh, no!" gasped Stanton. "I don't need one! And frankly--I can't afford one." Shy as a girl, his eyes eluded the doctor's frank stare. "You see," he explained diffidently; "you see, I'm just engaged to be married--and though business is fairly good and all that--my being away from the office six or eight weeks is going to cut like the deuce into my commissions--and roses cost such a horrid price last Fall--and there seems to be a game law on diamonds this year; they practically fine you for buying them, and--" The Doctor's face brightened irrelevantly. "Is she a Boston young lady?" he queried. "Oh, yes," beamed Stanton. "Good!" said the Doctor. "Then of course she can keep some sort of an eye on you. I'd like to see her. I'd like to talk with her--give her just a few general directions as it were." A flush deeper than any mere love-embarrassment spread suddenly over Stanton's face. "She isn't here," he acknowledged with barely analyzable mortification. "She's just gone south." "_Just_ gone south?" repeated the Doctor. "You don't mean--since you've been sick?" Stanton nodded with a rather wobbly grin, and the Doctor changed the subject abruptly, and busied himself quickly with the least bad-tasting medicine that he could concoct.