“Well, then, I think you ought to come back to-morrow when you can stay half an hour or an hour.” “I will,” she said. But he had not finished. “And the next day, too. Maybe they’d let you read to me, or something. And as long as I’m laid up here—it won’t be long, at that—I think you ought to come every day and help me pass the time. I forgive you, but I think you do owe me that much. And as soon as they let me take a drive I think you ought to go along. How about it?” “I will,” Lily said. “I will, indeed. I’ll do anything in the world you think might make up a little for the pain I’ve brought you. Nothing could make me happier.” “That’s good news,” the young man told her, thoughtfully. “A clip on the head isn’t necessarily such a bad thing, after all.” More and more he seemed to incline to this opinion;—in fact, he went so far as to assure Doctor Waite, three days later, that he preferred the hospital to the apartment old Hiram Huston was preparing for him. “I think I’d like to sort of settle down to the life here,” he said. “It’s nice and private and suits me exactly.” “Yes,” said the doctor, thoughtfully. “It’s a pity you’re too important to do what you want to.” And lightly, as if to himself, he hummed a fragment of frivolous song: “I don’t want to get well, I don’t want to get well, I’m in love with a beautiful nurse!” The young man heeded neither the humming nor the remark about his unfortunate importance. He frowned, looking anxiously at his watch on the table beside his couch. “I wonder what’s keeping her,” he said, peevishly. “She said she’d be here with a book to read to me. When anybody does to another person what she did to me, I think the least they can do is to be punctual, especially when they’ve promised they would.” She of whom he complained was not far away, however. At that moment she had just been greeted and detained by two girl friends of hers who encountered her in the park on her way to the hospital. Their manner did not please her. “Lill-_lee_!” they shouted from the distance, at sight of her. They whistled shrilly, and, as she looked toward them, they waved their arms at her; then came running, visibly excited and audibly uproarious. They seemed to be bursting with laughter; yet when they reached her, what they said was only, “Where you _going_, Lily?” And before she replied, they clutched each other, perishing of their mutual jocularity. From the first, Lily did not like their laughter;—it had not the sound of true mirth, but was the kind of mere vocal noise that hints of girlish malice. She looked at them disapprovingly. “I’m going to the hospital,” she said with some primness. “What’s so funny?” “What you going to _do_ at the hospital, Lily?” “Read to Mr. McArdle,” she replied. “He’s better and——”