t I call cutting it pretty
fat. Fancy my lolling here in the sun, and you . . . and you----" he
opened his eyes, regarding her as she stood before him in her trim,
nurse's uniform. "It's quite like a play, isn't it, where everything
comes right in the end? Miss Betty----"

"You mustn't call me that," said Betty primly. "I told you before.
You must say 'Nurse.'"

"Can't I say 'Nurse Betty'?"

"My name is Elizabeth. If you wanted to distinguish me from other
nurses you might conceivably say 'Nurse Elizabeth.' But even that's
not necessary, as I'm the only nurse here at the moment."

The Indiarubber Man looked cautiously round the sunlit enclosure.
"True. So you are----"

"And it's time for your beef-tea," added Betty severely, marching off
in the direction of the distant wing.

Her patient watched her slim form retreating and vanish down a green
alley. "You dear," he said, "you dear!" He meditated awhile. "It's a
rum world," he soliloquised. "Torps has gone. The Young Doc.'s gone.
The Pay's gone."

He mused awhile. "But we gave 'em an almighty hammering. And here am
I, alive and kicking again. And there's Betty. . . . It's a rum
world." He bent forward and gathered a daisy growing in the border
beside his seat. With his bleached, rather unsteady, fingers, he began
picking the petals from it one by one.

"She does, she doesn't. She does, she doesn't. She doesn't," repeated
the Indiarubber Man in a woeful voice.

A thrush hopped across the lawn, and paused to regard him with one
bright eye. Apparently reassured, it deftly secured and swallowed a
worm.

The Indiarubber Man laughed. "Doesn't anybody love you either?" he
said.

Betty reappeared in the distance carrying a tray in her hands. The
thrush, as if realising that two is company and three none, flew away.

Betty handed a cup to the invalid. "There's a piece of toast too--you
must soak it in the beef-tea, and here is a little bell. If you want
anything, or you aren't comfortable, you can ring it."

"I see." The Indiarubber Man gravely accepted all three gifts and laid
them on the seat beside him. "Thank you awfully. But you aren't going
away, are you?"

"Of course I am," said Betty. "I'm very busy. You _must_ remember
that this is a hospital, that you're a patient and I'm a nurse." She
moved off sedately.

"Miss Betty!" called the Indiarubber Man. "I mean 'Nurse.'" Betty
turned and retraced her footsteps. "Wouldn't