about a girl
named Mabel, for instance----"

He stirred again, because, after all, what did it matter what he had
said? She was gazing over the ward. She was not interested in him.
She had almost forgotten him. And as he stirred Mr. Simond's cane
fell out. It was immediately followed by the tin sign, which only
gradually subsided, face up, on the bare floor, in a slowly
diminishing series of crashes.

Jane Brown stooped and picked them both up and placed them on his
lap. Then, very stern, she marched out of the ward into the
corridor, and there subsided into quiet hysterics of mirth.
Twenty-two, who hated to be laughed at, followed her in the chair,
looking extremely annoyed.

"What else was I to do?" he demanded, after a time. "Of course, if
you report it, I'm gone."

"What do you intend to do with it now?" she asked. All her
professional manner had gone, and she looked alarmingly young.

"If I put it back, I'll only have to steal it again. Because I am
absolutely bored to death in that room of mine. I have played a
thousand games of solitaire."

The Probationer looked around. There was no one in sight.

"I should think," she suggested, "that if you slipped it behind that
radiator, no one would ever know about it."

Fortunately, the ambulance gong set up a clamour below the window
just then, and no one heard one of the hospital's most cherished
rules going, as one may say, into the discard.

The Probationer leaned her nose against the window and looked down.
A coloured man was being carried in on a stretcher. Although she did
not know it--indeed, never did know it--the coloured gentleman in
question was one Augustus Baird.

Soon afterward Twenty-two squeaked--his chair needed
oiling--squeaked back to his lonely room and took stock. He found
that he was rid of Mabel, but was still a reporter, hurt in doing
his duty. He had let this go because he saw that duty was a sort of
fetish with the Probationer. And since just now she liked him for
what she thought he was, why not wait to tell her until she liked
him for himself?

He hoped she was going to like him, because she was going to see him
a lot. Also, he liked her even better than he had remembered that he
did. She had a sort of thoroughbred look that he liked. And he liked
the way her hair was soft and straight and shiny. And he liked the
way she was all business and no nonsense. And the way she counted
pulses, with her lips moving and a little frown be