ned his eyes upon
her with a sudden keen look which rather startled her by its piercing
brightness suggesting, as it did, some return of fever.

"Tell me,"--he said--"Have I been ill long? More than a week?"

She smiled.

"A little more than a week,"--she answered, gently--"Don't worry!"

"I'm not worrying. Please tell me what day it is!"

"What day it is? Well, to-day is Sunday."

"Sunday! Yes--but what is the date of the month?"

She laughed softly, patting his hand.

"Oh, never mind! What does it matter?"

"It does matter,"--he protested, with a touch of petulance--"I know it
is July, but what time of July?"

She laughed again.

"It's not July," she said.

"Not July!"

"No. Nor August!"

He raised himself on his pillow and stared at her in questioning
amazement.

"Not July? Not August? Then----?"

She took his hand between her own kind warm palms, stroking it
soothingly up and down.

"It's not July, and it's not August!" she repeated, nodding at him as
though he were a worried and fractious child--"It's the second week in
September. There!"

His eyes turned from right to left in utter bewilderment. "But how----"
he murmured----

Then he suddenly caught her hands in the one she was holding.

"You mean to say that I have been ill all those weeks--a burden upon
you?"

"You've been ill all those weeks--yes!" she answered "But you haven't
been a burden. Don't you think it! You've--you've been a pleasure!" And
her blue eyes filled with soft tears, which she quickly mastered and
sent back to the tender source from which they sprang; "You have,
really!"

He let go her hand and sank back on his pillows with a smothered groan.

"A pleasure!" he muttered--"I!" And his fuzzy eyebrows met in almost a
frown as he again looked at her with one of the keen glances which those
who knew him in business had learned to dread. "Mary Deane, do not tell
me what is not and what cannot be true! A sick man--an old man--can be
no 'pleasure' to anyone;--he is nothing but a bore and a trouble, and
the sooner he dies the better!"

The smiling softness still lingered in her eyes.

"Ah well!"--she said--"You talk like that because you're not strong yet,
and you just feel a bit cross and worried! You'll be better in another
few days----"

"Another few days!" he interrupted her--"No--no--that cannot be--I must
be up and tramping it again--I must not stay on here--I have already
stayed too long."

A slight shadow