d.

'You all think you're dying,' the doctor remarked in a low, amused tone
to the ceiling, as he wiped a pair of scissors, 'when you've been
knocked silly, especially if there's a lot of blood about.'

The door opened.

'Here's John, ma'am,' said the cook, 'with two more doctors. What am I
to do?'

May involuntarily turned towards the door.

'Don't you go, Mrs. Norris,' the little dark man commanded. 'I want
you.' Then he carelessly scrutinized the elderly servant. 'Tell 'em
they're too late,' he said. 'It's generally like that when there's an
accident,' he continued after the housekeeper had gone. 'First you can't
get a doctor anywhere, and then in half an hour or so we come in crowds.
I've known seven doctors turn up one after another. But in that affair
the man happened to have been killed outright.'

He smiled grimly. In a little while he was snapping his bag.

'I'll come in the morning, of course,' he said, as he wrote on a piece
of paper. 'Have this made up, and give it him in the night if he is
wakeful. Keep him warm. You might put a couple of hot-water bags, one on
either side of him. You've got beef-tea made, you say? That's right. Let
him have as much as he wants. Mr. Norris, you'll sleep like a top.'

'But, doctor,' May inquired the next morning in the hall, after Edward
had smiled at a joke, and been informed that he must run down to
Bournemouth in a week, 'have we nothing to fear?'

'I think not,' was the measured answer. 'These affairs nearly always
seem much worse than they are. Of course, the immediate upset is
tremendous--the disorganization, and all that sort of thing. But
Nature's pretty wonderful. You'll find your husband will soon get over
it. I should say he had a good constitution.'

'And there will be no permanent effects?'

'Yes,' said the doctor, with genial cynicism. 'There'll be one
permanent effect. Nobody will ever persuade him to ride in a hansom
again. If he can't find a four-wheeler, he'll walk in future.'

She returned to the bedroom. The man on the bed was Edward Norris once
more, in control of himself, risen out of his humiliation. A feeling of
thankfulness overwhelmed her for a moment, and she sat down.

'Well, May?' he murmured.

'Well, dear.'

They both realized that what they had been through was a common, daily
street accident. The smile of each was self-conscious, apprehensive,
insincere.

'Quite a concert going on next door,' he said with an affectation of