The first of these came when Patricia brought his luncheon. He had been wondering if she would be the one to come; wondering and hoping. With the unfilial purpose driving him on, there were added twinges at the thought of his father's wife going on piling the mountain of obligation higher and still higher by waiting upon him, and thus reminding him at every turn of the adder fable. With Patricia it was different. "Good morning," he grimaced, when Patricia came in with the daintily appointed server. "Getting a bit more of the first-aid practice, are you?" "I am obeying orders," she flashed back, when she had shaken up the pillows and placed the appetizing meal within his reach. "Mrs. Blount said I'd probably have a less disturbing influence upon you than she would. Shall I feed you?" "Good heavens, no! I'm not that near dead, I hope! If you don't believe it, you may sit down and watch me eat--if you're not missing your own luncheon." "Nurses have no regular meal-times," she retorted. And then: "You are feeling a great deal better, aren't you?" "Much better--since you came. Did they tell you it was a dog?" She nodded, and he went on. "It was my unlucky night, I guess. Did the fire burn up my office? I forgot to ask Mrs. Blount about that." "No; it was a building across the street from the Temple Court." "'Small favors thankfully received,'" he quoted, resolutely pushing a fresh recurrence of the tomtom beatings into the background; "small favors and larger ones in proportion--this broth, for example. It's simply delicious. I hadn't realized how hungry I was." "The broth ought to be good; I made it myself, you know." "You did? Where, for pity's sake?" "In the hotel kitchen. The _chef_ was furious at first. He twirled his Napoleon-III mustaches and sputtered and swelled up like an angry old turkey. But when I talked nice to him in his own beloved Bordelaise he let me do anything I pleased." Blount looked up quickly, and the movement brought the head-throbbings back with disconcerting celerity. "You are cruelly kind to me, Patricia; everybody is kind to me. And I'm not needing kindness just now," he ended. "Aren't you? I don't agree with you, and I'm sure your father and Mrs. Blount wouldn't." Then she went on to tell him how they had all been up, watching the progress of the fire from their windows, when the word came that he had been hurt in the street. Also, she told how his father had impatiently smashed the telephone because, the wires having been cut and tangled in the fire, he could get no response, and how, thereupon, he had turned the entire night force of the hotel out to go in search of a doctor. "But with all that, he couldn't stand it to look on while the doctor was taking the stitches," she added. "He turned his back and tramped over here to the window; and I could hear him gritting his teeth and--and swearing."