od bless you, Nursey!' Miss Henschil was sobbing. 'You
don't know what this means to me. It takes it all off--from the
beginning.'

'But doesn't it make any difference to you now?' the nurse asked
curiously. 'Now that you're rightfully a woman?'

Conroy, busy with his bag, had not heard. Miss Henschil stared across,
and her beauty, freed from the shadow of any fear, blazed up within her.
'I see what you mean,' she said. 'But it hasn't changed anything. I want
Toots. _He_ has never been out of his mind in his life--except over
silly me.'

'It's all right,' said Conroy, stooping under the lamp,
Bradshaw in hand. 'If I change at Templecombe--for Bristol
(Bristol--Hereford--yes)--I can be with mother for breakfast in her room
and find out.'

'Quick, then,' said Nurse Blaber. 'We've passed Gillingham quite a
while. You'd better take some of our sandwiches.' She went out to get
them. Conroy and Miss Henschil would have danced, but there is no room
for giants in a South-Western compartment.

'Good-bye, good luck, lad. Eh, but you've changed already--like me. Send
a wire to our hotel as soon as you're sure,' said Miss Henschil. 'What
should I have done without you?'

'Or I?' said Conroy. 'But it's Nurse that's saving us really.'

'Then thank her,' said Miss Henschil, looking straight at him. 'Yes, I
would. She'd like it.'

When Nurse Blaber came back after the parting at Templecombe her nose
and her eyelids were red, but, for all that, her face reflected a great
light even while she sniffed over _The Cloister and the Hearth_.

Miss Henschil, deep in a house furnisher's catalogue, did not speak for
twenty minutes. Then she said, between adding totals of best, guest, and
servants' sheets, 'But why should our times have been the same, Nursey?'

'Because a child is born somewhere every second of the clock,' Nurse
Blaber answered. 'And besides that, you probably set each other off by
talking and thinking about it. You shouldn't, you know.'

'Ay, but you've never been in Hell,' said Miss Henschil.

The telegram handed in at Hereford at 12.46 and delivered to Miss
Henschil on the beach of a certain village at 2.7 ran thus:

'"_Absolutely confirmed. She says she remembers hearing noise of
accident in engine-room returning from India eighty-five._"'

'He means the year, not the thermometer,' said Nurse Blaber, throwing
pebbles at the cold sea.

'"_And two men scalded thus explaining my hoots._" (The idea of telling
me