"Not yet, thank you," said Mona. "Show me to Miss Reynolds's room, please. I will go there first." The room was brightly lighted with a pretty lamp, for Lucy could not bear to have anything gloomy about her. She was lying in bed, propped up with pillows, her eyes curiously large and bright, her cheeks thin, her face worn with recent suffering. Mona bit her lip hard. She had not realised that a few days of fever and pain could work such a change. Lucy tried to stretch out her arms, and then let them fall with a pitiful little laugh. "I can't hug you yet, Mona," she said, "but oh! it is good to see you," and tears of sheer physical weakness filled her eyes. "You poor little thing! What a scolding you shall have when you are better! You are not to be trusted out of my sight for a moment." "I know," said Lucy feebly. "I never should have got ill if you had been here; and now I shall just have one illness after another, till you come back and go on with your work." She looked so infinitely pathetic and unlike herself that Mona could scarcely find words. Instinctively she took Lucy's wrist in one cool hand, and laid the other on the child's flushed cheek. "Oh, I am all right now. Of course my heart bounded off when I heard the hansom stop. But here comes my doctor. I scarcely need you to send me to Paradise to-night, doctor; my friend Miss Maclean has come." Mona held out her hand. "Your name is almost as familiar to me as my own," she said. "It is a great pleasure to meet you." Dr Alice Bateson took the proffered hand without replying, and the two women exchanged a frank critical survey. Both seemed to be satisfied with the result. Dr Bateson had come in without gloves, and with a shawl thrown carelessly about her girlish figure. Her hat had seen palmier days, but its bent brim shaded a pair of earnest brown eyes and a resolute mouth. "She means work," thought Mona. "There is no humbug about her." "The girl has some _nous_," thought the doctor. "She would keep her head in an emergency." "Well, and how are you?" she said, turning with brusque kindness to Lucy. "Oh, I am all right--not beyond the need of your stiletto yet, though," and she held out a pretty white arm. The medical visit did not last more than three minutes. Dr Bateson took no fees from medical students, and she had too many patients on her books to waste much time over them, unless there seemed to be a chance that she could be of definite use, physical or moral. She had spent hours with Lucy when things were at their worst, but minutes were ample now.