nt of you to take a short vacation. I have therefore the greatest
pleasure in assuring you that you are free from duty for a week, a
fortnight, or a month, as your convenience may determine; and during your
much-regretted absence I will do my best to sustain the great loss of
your invaluable help."

On reading the message, John Storm flung himself into a chair and burst
into a long peal of bitter laughter. But when the laughter was spent
there came a sense of great loneliness. Then he remembered Mrs.
Callender, and went across to her little house in Victoria Square, and
showed her the canon's letter and told her everything.

"Lies, lies, lies!" she said. "Ah, laddie, laddie! to lie, to know you
lie, to be known to lie, and yet to go on lying--that is the whole art of
life with these fashionable shepherds and their fashionable flock. As for
that woman--ugh! She was separated from her husband for two years before
his death; and he died in a hotel abroad without kith or kin to comfort
him: and now she wears his hair in a gold locket on her bosom--that's
what she is! But all's well that ends well, laddie. The _holly_ will do
ye good, for you were killing yerself with work. You'll no be spending it
in your little island, now, eh?"

John Storm was sitting with one leg across the other, and his head on his
hand and his elbow on his knee.

"I shall spend it," he said, "in Retreat at the Brotherhood in
Bishopsgate."

"God bless me, man! is that the change of air ye'll be going to gie
yoursel'? It may be well enough for men with water in their veins; but
you have blood, laddie--blood! Tak' care, tak' care!"

XVI.

"Still at Martha's.

"Quite right, dear Aunt Anna, the terms 'authority' and 'obedience' must
be known and honoured. Only, when it is a case of put a penny in the slot
and out comes the word of command, you can't exactly feel that way. The
board of directors put the penny into the slot of this institution, and
the word of command, so far as I am concerned, comes out of the mouth of
Ward Sister Allworthy. I call her the White Owl. She is five feet ten,
and has big round cheeks which sometimes I should dearly love to slap--as
mothers slap their 'childers' when they administer a humiliating
punishment.

"So you think you notice 'a certain want of aptitude'? Well, I don't
think I am naturally a bad nurse, Aunt Anna. The patients like me, and
they don't die of the dumps when I am about. Only I can't practi