Tum_!" led the way to the liveliest of
choruses, in which, goaded by outstretched fingers and flashing eyes,
Stephen was forced to take his part. "_There were none!--there were
none_!" piped Pixie in the treble. "_And she went--and she went_!"
rumbled Pat in the bass. "_Matches! Matches_!" fell from Stephen's
lips, on a repeated high tenor note. Through ever-increasing
intricacies and elaborations ran the chorus, until at last at a signal
from the soprano it approached its close, the three singers proclaimed
in unison that "_there--were--none_!" and promptly fell back in their
seats in paroxysms of laughter. In the course of the last twenty years,
had he laughed as much as he had done within the last wonderful week?
Stephen asked himself the question as he walked home the night after the
singing of the "Matches" chorus, and there was little hesitation about
the answer.

A week, ten days of unshadowed happiness and companionship, and then a
cloud arose. Pat was not _well_; he grew worse; he grew seriously ill.
The knee itself had done all that was expected of it, but the first
attempt at walking, to which the poor fellow had looked forward as to a
festival, proved in reality a painful and depressing experience. Back
in his bed, limp with pain and exhaustion, poor Pat realised his own
weakness with a poignancy of disappointment. He had expected to be able
to walk at once, though not perhaps for any length of time, and these
few stumbling steps had been a bitter revelation. All these weeks of
confinement and suffering, and now a long and dragging convalescence!
Pat's heart swelled with bitterness and rebellion. Despite the presence
of Pixie and the constant visits of his friend, he was sick, sick to
death of the one small room, and the monotonous indoor life, and as a
young man successfully started in a young business, he longed with
ardour to get back to his work.

The world looked very black to Pat O'Shaughnessy for the rest of that
day, and atmospheric conditions did not help to cheer him. It was
raining, a slow, relentless rain, and in the air for days past had been
a rawness, a chill which crept to the very bone. Pixie drew the
curtains over every chink, and hung a shawl over the end of Pat's bed to
still further screen him from draughts, but Pat was not in the mood to
be coddled, and had that shawl whisked to the ground before one could
say Jack Robinson. He was curt and silent in his manner, and--rare