that
inasmuch as her son did not seem inclined to return to _her_ home he might
do a great deal worse than to remain where he was, and it was some time
before Simmy grasped the full significance of the remark.

He remembered hearing Lutie say that she was going to take George home
with her as soon as he was able to be moved!

What was he to do with himself after all these people were gone? For the
first time in his life he really knew what it meant to have a home, and
now it was to be broken up. He saw more of his home in the five or six
weeks that George was there than he had seen of it all told in years. He
stayed at home instead of going to the club or the theatre or to stupid
dinner parties. He hadn't the faintest idea that a place where a fellow
did nothing but sleep and eat bacon and eggs could be looked upon as a
"home." He had thought of it only as an apartment, or "diggings." Now he
loved his home and everything that was in it. How he would miss the
stealthy blue linen nurses, and the expressionless doctors, and the odour
of broths and soups, and the scent of roses, and the swish of petticoats,
and the elevating presence of pretty women, and the fragrance of them, and
the sweet chatter of them--Oh my, oh me-oh-my! If George would only get
well in a more leisurely fashion!

Certain interesting events, each having considerable bearing upon the
lives of the various persons presented in this narrative, are to be
chronicled, but as briefly as possible so that we may get on to the
results.

Naturally one turns first to the patient himself. He was the magnet that
drew the various opposing forces together and, in a way, united them in a
common enterprise, and therefore is of first importance. For days his life
hung in the balance. Most of the time he was completely out of his head.
It has been remarked that he thought himself to be dreaming when he first
beheld Lutie at his bedside, and it now becomes necessary to report an
entirely different sensation when he came to realise that he was being
attended by Dr. Thorpe. The instant he discovered Lutie he manifested an
immense desire to live, and it was this desire that sustained a fearful
shock when his fever-free eyes looked up into the face of his doctor.
Terror filled his soul. Almost his first rational words were in the form
of a half-whispered question: "For God's sake, can't I get well? Is--is it
hopeless?"

Braden was never to forget the anguish in the sick m