“_You_ turn hospital nurse,—ridiculous! You never shall, so long as I can prevent it. Shall she, Tom?” And she appealed to the latter, who had just come in. “Shall Annie go into those horrid hospitals?” “I am not Mrs. Graham’s keeper,” Tom replied, “but I should be sorry to see her acting in the capacity of hospital nurse, even though I know that some of our noblest, best women are engaged in that work.” “Yes, old chap,” and Jimmie laughed a merry laugh. “It’s mighty easy talking that way now, but suppose _you_ Captain Carleton, are some day among the terribly wounded, thigh shot through, arm splintered above the elbow, jaw-bone broken, and all that, wouldn’t the pain be easier to bear, if the nurse should happen to be Mrs. Graham, or somebody just like her?” “Undoubtedly it would,” Tom answered. “Still I should be sorry to have her there amid the sickening horrors.” “Please stop, I can’t bear to hear about it!” Rose exclaimed. “I know it would be nice to be a Florence Nightingale, and Annie would make a splendid one, but I’ll never let her go, unless you, or Jimmie, or Will are wounded, and then we’ll come together, won’t we, Annie?” There was no response from Annie, until Jimmie said: “Say, Mrs. Graham, if I am ever wounded, and you hear I am suffering in some dismal hole, will you come and care for me?” He did not join Will’s or Tom’s name with his own. It was “Jimmie Carleton” whom Annie was to nurse. But it did not matter. Lifting up her head so that her soft, blue eyes looked into his, Annie answered, unhesitatingly: “Providence permitting, I will, and I would do the same for any brave fellow who follows, as my husband did, where duty to his country leads.” “So you see you will fare no better than I, after all,” Tom laughingly rejoined, while Jimmie thought within himself: “Why need she always bring that husband in? It’s bad enough to know she’s had one, without eternally hearing about him.” Foolish Jimmie. It was folly for him to lie awake so long as he did that night, or to dream, when at last he slept, of hospital walls expanding into a palace as an angel form with hair and eyes like Annie’s bent over his feverish pillow, while soft, white hands dressed some gaping wound where the enemy’s bullet had been. Sheer folly, too, was it for “dignified old Tom,” to watch from his window the young moon, until it set in the western sky, thinking of _Mary_, as he tried to make himself believe, wondering why it was that Annie reminded him so much of her, and why he should be so deeply interested in one who, until a few weeks past, had been to him a stranger.