ss the courtyard and the Nurse stood
watching her; then turned slowly and went into the house to tell
Billy Grant.

Now the stories about what followed differ. They agree on one point:
that Billy Grant had a heart-to-heart talk with the substitute at
two o'clock that afternoon and told her politely but firmly that he
would none of her. Here the divergence begins. Some say he got the
superintendent over the house telephone and said he had intended to
make a large gift to the hospital, but if his comfort was so little
considered as to change nurses just when he had got used to one, he
would have to alter his plans. Another and more likely story,
because it sounds more like Billy Grant, is that at five o'clock a
florist's boy delivered to Miss Smith a box of orchids such as never
had been seen before in the house, and a card inside which said:
"Please, dear Miss Smith, take back the Hart that thou gavest."

Whatever really happened--and only Billy Grant and the lady in
question ever really knew--that night at eight o'clock, with Billy
Grant sitting glumly in his room and Miss Hart studying typhoid
fever in the hall, the Nurse came back again to the pavilion with
her soft hair flying from its afternoon washing and her eyes
shining. And things went on as before--not quite as before; for with
the nurse question settled the craving got in its work again, and
the next week was a bad one. There were good days, when he taught
her double-dummy auction bridge, followed by terrible nights, when
he walked the floor for hours and she sat by, unable to help. Then
at dawn he would send her to bed remorsefully and take up the fight
alone. And there were quiet nights when both slept and when he would
waken to the craving again and fight all day.

"I'm afraid I'm about killing her," he said to the Staff Doctor one
day; "but it's my chance to make a man of myself--now or never."

The Staff Doctor was no fool and he had heard about the orchids.

"Fight it out, boy!" he said. "Pretty soon you'll quit peeling and
cease being a menace to the public health, and you'd better get it
over before you are free again."

So, after a time, it grew a little easier. Grant was pretty much
himself again--had put on a little flesh and could feel his biceps
rise under his fingers. He took to cold plunges when he felt the
craving coming on, and there were days when the little pavilion was
full of the sound of running water. He shaved himself daily, too,