"It's the same thing. I say, what a howling swell you'll be."

At that Rose laughed (at last he had made her).

She ran up-stairs; and through a door ajar, he heard her singing in her
own room.

III

In Tanqueray's memorandum-book for nineteen hundred and two there stands
this note: "June 10th. Rose Show. Remember to take a holiday."

Rose, he knew, was counting the days till the tenth.

About a fortnight before the tenth, Tanqueray was in bed, ill. He had
caught a cold by walking furiously, and then lying out on the grass in
the chill of the May evening. There was a chance, Rose said, of its
turning to influenza and bronchitis, and it did.

He was so bad that Mrs. Eldred dragged herself up-stairs to look at him.

"Bed's the best place, sir, for you," she said. "So just you lie quiet
'ere, sir, and Rose'll look after you. And if there's anything you
fancy, sir, you tell Rose, and I'll make it you."

There was nothing that he fancied but to lie still there and look at
Rose when, in a spare hour, she sat by his window, sewing. Bad as he
was, he was not so far gone as to be ever oblivious of her presence.
Even at his worst, one night when he had had a touch of fever, he was
aware of her wandering in and out of his room, hanging over him with a
thermometer, and sitting by his bedside. When he flung the clothes off
she was there to cover him; when his pillow grew hot she turned it; when
he cried out with thirst she gave him a cool drink.

In the morning she was pale and heavy-eyed; her hair was all unsleeked,
and its round coils were flattened at the back. She had lain down on her
bed, dressed, for five minutes at a time, but she had not closed her
eyes or her ears all night.

In a week he was well enough to enjoy being nursed. He was now
exquisitely sensitive to the touch of her hands, and to the nearness of
her breathing mouth as her face bent over him, tender, absorbed, and
superlatively grave. What he liked best of all was to hold out his weak
hands to be washed and dried by hers; that, and having his hair brushed.

He could talk to her now without coughing. Thus--

"I say, what a bother I am to you."

Rose had taken away the basin and towels, and was arranging his hair
according to her own fancy. And Rose's fancy was to part it very much on
one side, and brush it back in a curl off his forehead. It gave him a
faint resemblance to Mr. Robinson, the elegant young draper in the High
Street, whom s