e and made his dressings look untidy. Enid took
in these details at a glance.

"Does the light hurt your eyes? Let me put up one of the blinds
for a moment, because I want you to see these flowers. I've
brought you my first sweet peas."

Claude blinked at the bunch of bright colours she held out before
him. She put them up to his face and asked him if he could smell
them through his medicines. In a moment he ceased to feel
embarrassed. His mother brought a glass bowl, and Enid arranged
the flowers on the little table beside him.

"Now, do you want me to darken the room again?"

"Not yet. Sit down for a minute and talk to me. I can't say much
because my face is stiff."

"I should think it would be! I met Leonard Dawson on the road
yesterday, and he told me how you worked in the field after you
were cut. I would like to scold you hard, Claude."

"Do. It might make me feel better." He took her hand and kept her
beside him a moment. "Are those the sweet peas you were planting
that day when I came back from the West?"

"Yes. Haven't they done well to blossom so early?"

"Less than two months. That's strange," he sighed.

"Strange? What?"

"Oh, that a handful of seeds can make anything so pretty in a few
weeks, and it takes a man so long to do anything and then it's
not much account."

"That's not the way to look at things," she said reprovingly.

Enid sat prim and straight on a chair at the foot of his bed. Her
flowered organdie dress was very much like the bouquet she had
brought, and her floppy straw hat had a big lilac bow. She began
to tell Claude about her father's several attacks of erysipelas.
He listened but absently. He would never have believed that Enid,
with her severe notions of decorum, would come into his room and
sit with him like this. He noticed that his mother was quite as
much astonished as he. She hovered about the visitor for a few
moments, and then, seeing that Enid was quite at her ease, went
downstairs to her work. Claude wished that Enid would not talk at
all, but would sit there and let him look at her. The sunshine
she had let into the room, and her tranquil, fragrant presence,
soothed him. Presently he realized that she was asking him
something.

"What is it, Enid? The medicine they give me makes me stupid. I
don't catch things."

"I was asking whether you play chess."

"Very badly."

"Father says I play passably well. When you are better you must
let me bring up my ivory