e. You'll lie exactly as flat as you are now.
If it's any consolation I'll tell you that you look like a prostrate
man-angel seven feet long."

"Thanks. I'd fire a pillow at you if I had one. I don't want to look
like an object for sympathy, that's all."

Burns nodded understandingly. "Well, Jord," he said a moment later,
"will you go home on Saturday, too?"

The two looked at each other. Then, "If you say so," King agreed.

"All right. Then we'll get rid of two of our most interesting patients
on that happy day. Never mind--the mails will still carry--and Franz is
a faithful messenger. What's that, Miss Dwight? All right, I'll be
there." And he went out, with a gay nod and wave of the hand to the man
on the bed.

This was on Monday. On Tuesday King offered his petition that Anne
Linton would pay him a visit before she left on Saturday. When the
answer came it warmed his heart more than anything he had yet had from
her:

Of course I will come--only I want you to know that I shall be
dreadfully sorry to come walking, when you must still lie so
long on that poor back. Doctor Burns has told me how brave you
are, with all the pain you are still suffering. But I am
wonderfully glad to learn that he is so confident of your
complete recovery. Just to know that you can be your active
self again is wonderful when one thinks what might have
happened. I shall always remember you as you seemed to me the
day you brought me here. I was, of course, feeling pretty
limp, and the sight of you, in such splendid vigour, made me
intensely envious. And even though I see you now "unhorsed," I
shall not lose my first impression, because I know that by and
by you will be just like that again--looking and feeling as if
you were fit to conquer the world.

It was the most personal note he had had from her, and he liked it very
much. He couldn't help hoping for more next day, and did his best to
secure it by the words he wrote in reply. But Wednesday's missive was
merely a merrily piquant description of the way she was trying her
returning strength by one expedition after another about her room. On
Thursday she sent him some very jolly sketches of her "packing up," and
on Friday she wrote hurriedly to say that she couldn't write, because
she was making little visits to other patients.

* * * * *

Jordan King had never been more exacting