our eyebrows," said Jane Brown.

The man--he was as young for a man as Jane Brown was for a
nurse--the man lay quite still for a moment. Then:

"I'm sorry to undeceive you," he said. "But my right leg is off."

He said it lightly, because that is the way he took things. But he
had a strange singing in his ears.

"I'm afraid it's broken. But you still have it." She smiled. She had
a very friendly smile. "Have you any pain anywhere?"

He was terribly afraid she would go away and leave him, so, although
he was quite comfortable, owing to a hypodermic he had had, he
groaned slightly. He was, at that time, not particularly interested
in Jane Brown, but he did not want to be alone. He closed his eyes
and said feebly:

"Water!"

She gave him a teaspoonful, bending over him and being careful not
to spill it down his neck. Her uniform crackled when she moved. It
had rather too much starch in it.

The man, whose name was Middleton, closed his eyes. Owing to the
morphia, he had at least a hundred things he wished to discuss. The
trouble was to fix on one out of the lot.

"I feel like a bit of conversation," he observed. "How about you?"

Then he saw that she was busy again. She held an old-fashioned
hunting-case watch in her hand, and her eyes were fixed on his
chest. At each rise and fall of the coverlet her lips moved. Mr.
Middleton, who was feeling wonderful, experimented. He drew four
very rapid breaths, and four very slow ones. He was rewarded by
seeing her rush to a table and write something on a sheet of yellow
paper.

"Resparation, very iregular," was what she wrote. She was not a
particularly good speller.

After that Mr. Middleton slept for what he felt was a day and a
night. It was really ten minutes by the hunting-case watch. Just
long enough for the Senior Surgical Interne, known in the school as
the S.S.I., to wander in, feel his pulse, approve of Jane Brown, and
go out.

Jane Brown had risen nervously when he came in, and had proffered
him the order book and a clean towel, as she had been instructed. He
had, however, required neither. He glanced over the record, changed
the spelling of "resparation," arranged his tie at the mirror, took
another look at Jane Brown, and went out. He had not spoken.

It was when his white-linen clad figure went out that Middleton
wakened and found it was the same day. He felt at once like
conversation, and he began immediately. But the morphia did a
curious thing to