However, every nurse has her day. She finally departs. Your eyes are wet. You are weeping over yourself. The nurse represented not only care for your precious carcass but also a surcease from the demands of the world. Her going means a return to work, and you hate to work if you are a convalescent of the true-blue sort. Hence your tears. But you soon recover. You are free. The doctor has lost interest in your case. You throw physic to the dogs. You march at a lenten tempo about your embattled bed. You begin sudden little arguments with your wife, just to see if you haven't lost any of your old-time virility in the technique of household squabbling. You haven't. You swell with masculine satisfaction and for at least five minutes you are the Man of the House. A sudden twinge, a momentary giddiness, send you scurrying back to your bailiwick, the bedroom, and the familiar leitmotiv is once more sounded, and with what humility of accent: "Mamma!" The Eternal Masculine? The Eternal Child! You mumble to her that it is nothing, and as you recline on that thrice-accursed couch, you endeavour to be haughty. But she knows you are simply a sick grumpy old person of the male species who needs be ruled with a rod of iron, although the metal be well hidden. The first cautious peep from a window upon the world you left snow white, and find in vernal green, is an experience almost worth the miseries you have so impatiently endured. A veritable vacation for the eyes, you tell yourself, as the fauna and flora of Flatbush break upon your enraptured gaze. Presently you watch with breathless interest the man[oe]uvres of ruddy little Georgie in the next garden as he manfully deploys a troupe of childish contemporaries, his little sister doggedly traipsing at the rear. Sturdy Georgie has the makings of a leader. He may be a Captain of Commerce, a Colonel, and Master-politician; but he will always be foremost, else nowhere. "You are the audience," he imperiously bids his companions, and when rebellion seemed imminent he punched, without a trace of anger, a boy much taller. I envied Georgie his abounding vitality. Furtively I raised the window. Instantly I was spied by Georgie who cried lustily: "Little boy, little boy, come down and play with me!" I almost felt gay, "You come up here," I called out with one lung. "I haven't a stepladder," he promptly replied. The fifth floor is as remote without a ladder as age is separated from youth. (Now I'm moralising!) Undismayed, Georgie continued to call: "Little boy, little boy, come down and play with me!"