to some, game, and I
didn't want to take it."

"Up to some game?" repeated Austen.

"Well, I don't know," continued Mr. Meader, thoughtfully, "the woman
here tells me she comes regular in the summer time to see sick folks,
but from the way she made up to me I had an idea that she wanted
something. But I don't know. Thought I'd ask you. You see, she's
railrud."

"Railroad!"

"She's Flint's daughter."

Austen laughed.

"I shouldn't worry about that," he said. "If Mr. Flint sent his daughter
with fruit to everybody his railroad injures, she wouldn't have time to
do anything else. I doubt if Mr. Flint ever heard of your case."

Mr. Meader considered this, and calculated there was something in it.

"She was a nice, common young lady, and cussed if she didn't make me
laugh, she has such a funny way of talkin'. She wanted to know all about
you."

"What did she want to know?" Austen exclaimed, not unnaturally.

"Well, she wanted to know about the accident, and I told her how you
druv up and screwed that thing around my leg and backed the train down.
She was a good deal took with that."

"I think you are inclined to make too much of it," said Austen.

Three days later, as he was about to enter the ward, Mr. Meader being
now the only invalid there, he heard a sound which made him pause in
the doorway. The sound was feminine laughter of a musical quality that
struck pleasantly on Austen's ear. Miss Victoria Flint was sated beside
Mr. Meader's bed, and qualified friendship had evidently been replaced
by intimacy since Austen's last visit, for Mr. Meader was laughing, too.

"And now I'm quite sure you have missed your vocation, Mr. Meader," said
Victoria. "You would have made a fortune on the stage."

"Me a play-actor!" exclaimed the invalid. "How much wages do they git?"

"Untold sums," she declared, "if they can talk like you."

"He kind of thought that story funny--same as you," Mr. Meader
ruminated, and glanced up. "Drat me," he remarked, "if he ain't a-comin'
now! I callated he'd run acrost you sometime."

Victoria raised her eyes, sparkling with humour, and they met Austen's.

"We was just talkin' about you," cried Mr. Meader, cordially; "come
right in." He turned to Victoria. "I want to make you acquainted," he
said, "with Austen Vane."

"And won't you tell him who I am, Mr. Meader?" said Victoria.

"Well," said Mr. Meader, apologetically, "that was stupid of me--wahn't
it? But I callated he'd know.