"Oh, Thurso, how late!" she said. "Have you any idea that it is after half-past eight, and I've got such a sinking inside as is probably quite unparalleled? Don't let us dress; then we can dine at once. I'm sure dinner is ready, because I distinctly smelled soup, and something roast, and baked apples, all rolling richly out of the kitchen windows. I nearly burst into tears because I wanted them so much. Well, how has the day gone?" He looked at her in a sort of despair. "Oh, Maud, it is too awful," he said. "Twelve fresh cases to-day; I don't know what to do. And when my head is like this I'm worse than useless. I can't think; I can't face things." Maud took his arm. "Poor dear old boy!" she said. "Has it been bad all day?" "No; it was all right in the morning after the laudanum, but it came on worse than ever after lunch. Well, not exactly after lunch, because I didn't have any." Maud gave a little exclamation of impatience. "Thurso, you are too bad!" she said. "You know perfectly well that if you go without food too long, you always get one of these headaches. And it isn't the slightest use your saying that there wasn't any time for lunch, because the biggest lunch that ever happened can be eaten in ten minutes, whereas a headache takes hours. I hate you to be in pain; but what a fool you are, dear! You are wicked also, knave and fool, because you make yourself of absolutely no use to anybody when you are like this." He smiled at her; the infection of her energy put a little life into him. "Well, I forgot about lunch till the pain came on," he said; "and it was turned full on at once. After that I simply couldn't eat; it was no use trying." "If that is meant to imply that you are not going to have any dinner either," she said, "you make a grave error. You are going to have soup and meat and roast apples. And if you attempt to deny it, I shall instantly add toasted cheese. In fact, I think I will in any case." Thurso was silent a moment. "Ah, these poor wretched people----" he began. But Maud rudely and decisively interrupted. "I am not going to hear one word about them till you have finished dinner," she said. "Afterwards, because you will be better then, we will talk. Don't you remember how, if we weren't quite well, nurse always said that we would be better after dinner? And we always were, unless we ate too much. I wonder whether it was dinner that did it, or mere suggestion--don't they call it--from the omnipotent and infallible nurse." "Dinner," said he. "Oh, damn my head!" he added in a sudden burst of tired irritability and pain, which was rare with him, even to Maud. "Yes, with pleasure, if that will make it better. But I wonder if it was entirely dinner. You know, there is something in suggestion, though I prefer supplementing suggestion with some practical measure. Who are those people who are always quite well because they think they are?" "I should think they are fools," said he.