determined to stay where I was. I pretended to go to sleep and even went
the length of snoring in a long-drawn, satisfied kind of way. She came
over and looked at me. I very slightly opened the corner of one eye and
saw by the expression of her face that she did not believe I was really
asleep. I prepared for the final struggle by gripping the bedclothes
tightly with both hands and poking my feet between the bars at the
bottom of the bed.

At three o'clock she had me seated in the armchair, clothed in my
dressing gown, with a rug wrapped round my legs. I was tingling with
suppressed rage and flushed with a feeling of degradation. I intended,
as soon as I regained my self control, to say some really nasty things
to her. Before I had made up my mind which of several possible remarks
she would dislike most, Titherington came into the room. The nurse does
not like Titherington. She has never liked him since the day that he
kept her outside the door while we drank champagne. She always smoothes
her apron with both hands when she sees him, which is a sign that she
would like to do him a bodily injury if she could. On this occasion,
alter smoothing her apron and shoving a protruding hair pin into the
back of her hair, she marched out of the room.

"McMeekin tells me," I said to Titherington, "that Vittie has got the
influenza. Is it true?"

"He says he has," said Titherington, with strong emphasis on the word
"says."

"Then I wish you'd go round and offer him the use of my nurse. I don't
want her."

"He has two aunts, and besides----"

I was not going to allow Vittie's aunts to stand in my way. I
interrupted Titherington with an argument which I felt sure he would
appreciate.

"He may have twenty aunts," I said; "that's not my point. What I'm
thinking of is the excellent effect it will produce in the constituency
if I publicly sacrifice myself by handing over my nurse to my political
opponent. The amount of electioneering capital which could be made
out of an act of heroism of that kind--why, it would catch the popular
imagination more than if I jumped into a mill race to save Vittie from a
runaway horse, and everybody knows that if you can bring off a spoof of
that sort an election is as good as won."

Titherington growled.

"All the papers would have it," I said. "Even the Nationalists would
be obliged to admit that I'd done a particularly noble thing." "I don't
believe Vittie has the influenza."

"McMeekin sai