nswered her fervently.
"St. Ebbe's is my hospital. I have been 'walking it' for a year past. I
was there to-day, and Miss Millar is well known all over the place. She
is a great favourite with the matron, Mrs. Hull, and the house surgeon,
and especially with the operating surgeon. He is always asking to have
Miss Millar in his cases since that boy had his leg cut off."

"I know, I know," chimed in Rose, "the little boy who begged you to wait
till he had said his prayers, and when he could not do it for himself,
Annie was able to do it for him. Now he is hopping about on his crutches
quite actively and happily; and she has got him an engagement, to clean
the knives and boots at Mrs. Jennings, the boarding-house in Welby
Square where I stay. Isn't it too funny and nice that you should happen
to have to do with St. Ebbe's and Annie?"

"It has been a great pleasure to me--well, these are not the right
words," said the young fellow with sudden gravity and a shade of
agitation in his manner. "I count it the greatest piece of good fortune
which ever befell me that I took St. Ebbe's for my hospital. But I ought
not to presume on my acquaintance with Miss Millar," he began again
immediately, with an infusion of cautious reserve and something like
vexation creeping into his tone; "it is purely professional. We are far
too busy people at St. Ebbe's to know each other as private persons.
Very likely if you ask her, she will deny all knowledge of me as an
individual; she may not even be able to recall the fact of my existence
apart from a circle of big uncouth medical students in the train of the
doctors--all alike to her. At the same time I have drunk tea in her
company both in the matron's room and in Dr. Moss's, and I have often
sat near her in the services at the hospital chapel," he ended a little
defiantly.

The speech, save for its ring of half-boyish mortification, was
suspicious, as if he were providing a loophole for escape in case Annie
refused to indorse his assertion of mutual acquaintance. But Rose, in
spite of her spirit and quickness, was hardly more given to suspicion
than her sister May showed herself, and saw nothing dubious in his
remark. She was carried away with the agreeable surprise of having
stumbled on somebody connected with St. Ebbe's who knew all about Annie.
She chatted on in the frankest, friendliest way, plying him with
girlish questions, and supplying free comments on his answers; and he
was an au