ively.

"I guess that's the answer," he said, pulling at his little moustache.
"I'm sorry, Anne. It's too bad--for both of you. Lordy, I never dreamed I
could be so unselfish. I'm mad in love with you myself and--oh, well!
That's an old tale, so we'll cut it short. I don't know what I'm going to
do without Brady. I've got the blues so bad that--why, I cried like a nasty
little baby down there at the--everybody lookin' at me pityingly and saying
to themselves 'what a terrible thing grief is when it hits a man like
that,' and thinkin' of course that I'd lost a whole family in Belgium or
somewhere--oh, Lordy, what a blithering--"

"Hush!" whispered Anne, her own eyes glistening. "You are an angel, Simmy.
You--"

"Let's talk sense," he broke in abruptly. "Braden left his business in my
hands, and his pleasures in the hands of Dr. Cole. He says it's a pleasure
to heal people, so that's why I put it in that way. I've got his will down
in our safety vault, and his instructions about that silly foundation--"

"You--you think he may not come back?" she said, gripping her hands under
the edge of the table.

"You never can tell. Taking precautions, that's all, as any wise man would
do. Oh, I'm sorry, Anne! I should have known better. Lordy, you're as
white as--Sure, he'll come back! He isn't going to be in the least danger.
Not the least. Nobody bothers the doctors, you know. They can go anywhere.
They wear plug hats and all that sort of thing, and all armies respect a
plug hat. A plug hat is a _silk_ hat, you know,--the safest hat in the
world when you're on the firing line. Everybody tries to hit the hat and
not the occupant. It's a standing army joke. I was reading in the paper
the other day about a fellow going clear from one end of the line to the
other and having six hundred and some odd plug hats shot off his head
without so much as getting a hair singed. Wait! I can tell what you're
going to ask, and I can't, on such short notice, answer the question. I
can only say that I don't know where he got the hats. Ah, good! You're
laughing again, and, by Jove, it becomes you to blush once in a while,
too. Tell me, old lady,"--he leaned forward and spoke very seriously,--"does
it mean a great deal to you?"

She nodded her head slowly. "Yes, Simmy, it means everything."

He drew a long breath. "That's just what I thought. One ordinary dose of
commonsense split up between the two of you wouldn't be a bad thing for
the case."