are going to wrap you in a blanket and
put you into a carriage, and before you have time to get tired we shall
be home."

"Home!" echoed Jim, his eyes shining.

"What makes you look so sober?" Miss Laura asked him as they drove away.
"You aren't sorry to leave the hospital?"

"Sorry?" Jim gave a shaky little laugh, then suddenly was grave again.
"Yes, I'm sorry, but it's for all the other fellows that nobody's coming
for," he explained.

"I wish I could have taken them all home with us," Laura answered
quickly. "I'll tell you what we'll do, Jim. If you'll get well very
fast, maybe you and I can give a little Christmas party in your ward, to
those other boys who have to stay there."

"Hang up stockin's an'--an' a tree an' all?" Jim questioned
breathlessly.

"Yes. Wouldn't you like that?"

"_Gee!_" was Jim's rapturous comment. "You bet I'll get well fast--if I
can," the afterthought in a lower tone.

The room Laura had prepared for the boy had been a nursery, and had a
frieze, representing in gay colours the old Mother Goose stories. Jim
was put on a cot beside the open fire, where he lay very still, but it
was not the dull hopeless stillness of the hospital. Now he was resting,
and his eyes travelled happily along the wall as he picked out the old
familiar characters.

"Makes me feel like a little kid--seeing all those," he said, pointing
at them.

The thin white face and small figure under the bedclothes looked like a
very "little kid" still, Laura thought. The gray eyes swept over the
large sunny room and then back to Miss Laura's face, and suddenly Jim's
lips trembled.

"I--I--I think you're _bully_!" he broke out, and instantly turned his
face to the wall and was still again. Laura slipped quietly out of the
room. When she returned a few minutes later, she brought a supper tray.

"You and I are going to have supper here to-night, Jim," she announced
cheerfully, "because my father is away, and I should be lonesome all
alone downstairs and you might be lonesome up here. You must have a
famous appetite, you know, if you are to get well and strong for that
Christmas party at the hospital."

"I'm hungry, all right," Jim declared, his eyes lingering on the
tempting food so daintily served; but after all he did not eat very
much.

After supper he lay quietly watching the leaping flames for a long time.
Suddenly he broke the silence with a question.

"I'll be back there then?"

"Back where, Jim? I don