"Thurso, you are admirable," she said. "It's an excellent idea moving them up here, so excellent that I wonder I did not think of it first. But as for my going back to town----" "But how on earth can you stop here with the house crammed full of typhoid patients?" "Same way as you can. I leave here when you leave." "But, Maud----" "There isn't any 'but, Maud.' I don't go unless you turn me out into the cold bleak night--oh, let's poke up the fire, I am sure there is a frost!--in which case I shall die of exposure on the lawn. To begin with, there is no risk of infection, and, to go on with, I shouldn't catch it if there was." "Oh! Why not?" "Because one is mercifully allowed to get through the day's work. I came up here as your 'pal.' And if I went to bed with typhoid I couldn't be anybody's 'pal.' Besides, I've had typhoid already. At the present moment I am going to play you at picquet, and you owe me nine shillings from last night." CHAPTER II. Maud had happened to come across in a book she was reading on the way up to Scotland an account of an epidemic of typhoid, in which the charitable lady (vicar's wife) of the place sat by the bedsides of the patients, held their hands, and fed them with "cooling fruits." It occurred to her as possible, though not very likely, that the treatment of typhoid had undergone alterations even as radical as this indicated, since she had had the disease herself, and on arrival she had asked the doctor, quoting this remarkable passage, if she should telegraph for a supply of cooling fruits. The excellent Dr. Symes, though not given either to joking or quick in the perception of a joke, had laughed immoderately. "Cooling fruits!" he said. "Feed them with cooling fruits, Lady Maud, and you will soon stop the epidemic, because everybody will be dead." Then he checked his laughter. "It was good of you to come," he said, "but you have your work up at the house. Just keep Lord Thurso--because I know him--from moping and being miserable. I am glad you came with him. But when he is away, down in the village, do what you please apart from the cooling fruits. I suggest your being out of doors all you can. You will have your work in the evening, and the sun and the wind and the rain, which pray God we get, will fit you best for it." * * * * *