continued the Doctor more soberly, "there ought to be
somebody a trifle more interested in you than the janitor to look
after your food and your medicine and all that. I'm going to send you
a nurse."

"Oh, no!" gasped Stanton. "I don't need one! And frankly--I can't
afford one." Shy as a girl, his eyes eluded the doctor's frank stare.
"You see," he explained diffidently; "you see, I'm just engaged to be
married--and though business is fairly good and all that--my being
away from the office six or eight weeks is going to cut like the deuce
into my commissions--and roses cost such a horrid price last Fall--and
there seems to be a game law on diamonds this year; they practically
fine you for buying them, and--"

The Doctor's face brightened irrelevantly. "Is she a Boston young
lady?" he queried.

"Oh, yes," beamed Stanton.

"Good!" said the Doctor. "Then of course she can keep some sort of an
eye on you. I'd like to see her. I'd like to talk with her--give her
just a few general directions as it were."

A flush deeper than any mere love-embarrassment spread suddenly over
Stanton's face.

"She isn't here," he acknowledged with barely analyzable
mortification. "She's just gone south."

"_Just_ gone south?" repeated the Doctor. "You don't mean--since
you've been sick?"

Stanton nodded with a rather wobbly grin, and the Doctor changed the
subject abruptly, and busied himself quickly with the least
bad-tasting medicine that he could concoct.

Then left alone once more with a short breakfast and a long morning,
Stanton sank back gradually into a depression infinitely deeper than
his pillows, in which he seemed to realize with bitter contrition that
in some strange, unintentional manner his purely innocent,
matter-of-fact statement that Cornelia "had just gone south" had
assumed the gigantic disloyalty of a public proclamation that the lady
of his choice was not quite up to the accepted standard of feminine
intelligence or affections, though to save his life he could not
recall any single glum word or gloomy gesture that could possibly have
conveyed any such erroneous impression to the Doctor.

[Illustration: Every girl like Cornelia had to go South sometime
between November and March]

"Why Cornelia _had_ to go South," he reasoned conscientiously. "Every
girl like Cornelia _had_ to go South sometime between November and
March. How could any mere man even hope to keep rare, choice,
exquisite creatures like that c