y weak. But I
rejoiced to know my strength had come back even that much. I crossed
to the window after a moment and looked out. In the distance
glimmered the sea, blue and joyous and beautiful. How I longed to be
out near it, in its warm salt breeze! Beside my window grew the
companion of my weary hours, the waving palm; beneath there was a
little flagged court, shut in by small buildings belonging to the
hotel. There was a well there and a banana-tree, and a man sitting
down plucking alive a struggling fowl. I called to him in Spanish:

"Send the administrador to me." And he looked up.

A frightened look came into his face as he saw who it was that called
him. Then he nodded, and carrying the unhappy bird by its feet, head
downwards, disappeared into the hotel.

People and things move slowly with the Spaniards. I waited an hour,
gazing out into the amethystine distance, wondering if Suzee's glad,
careless, irresponsible little spirit was dancing there in the
sunbeams; and then a knock came at the door.

I walked to it and said: "Who is there?"

I recognised the voice of the administrador in his answer, and
unlocked the door and bid him come in.

He did so, with an alarmed aspect.

"Have you seen the nurse?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied; "she told me you were again delirious and had
refused to take your medicine, and that she must refuse all
responsibility for you."

"I am not at all delirious, as you see," I answered; "I simply want to
get well, and each time I take their stuff I get worse; so I am going
to cease taking it. Now what I ask you to do is to keep that woman and
the doctor and the surgeon out of my room. All I want is to be left
alone, to be quiet. The surgeon took all the stitches out yesterday.
There is no need for _him_ to see me again, and the others I won't
have in here."

"But the responsibility, really, Senor," the man muttered looking all
ways at once, "and the good doctor--such an amiable man. What object
could he have in not curing the Senor quickly?"

"The object of prolonging his fees," I answered smiling, "I should
think. When I get well, his fees stop." Then it occurred to me this
man had also an object in keeping me here, since my hotel bill would
certainly stop, like the doctors' fees, when I got well; so I added:

"What day of the month is it? The twentieth? Well, listen to this. If
I am well, perfectly well by the end of the month, I will give you a
cheque for fifty pounds i