not catch the words and the singing stopped.
Then light footsteps passed the arch and there was silence again.

"Who's that?" he asked with an energy he had not been capable of until
then.

"_La mignonne_," said the old woman with a smile that showed her thick,
red lips and firm white teeth.

"And who's Mignonne?"

"_La, la!_" said the woman soothingly. "_C'est ma mignonne._ But you jess
go to sleep again."

"How can I go to sleep when I'm not sleepy and you won't tell me what I
want to know?" Dick grumbled, but the woman raised her hand and began to
sing an old plantation song.

"I'm not a child," he protested weakly. "But that's rather nice."

Closing his eyes, he tried to think. His nurse was not a Spanish mulatto,
as her dark dress suggested. It was more likely that she came from
Louisiana, where the old French stock had not died out; but Dick felt
puzzled. She had spoken, obviously with affection, of _ma mignonne_; but
he was sure the singer was no child of hers. There was no Creole accent
in that clear voice, and the steps he heard were light. The feet that had
passed his door were small and arched; not flat like a negro's. He had
seen feet of the former kind slip on an iron staircase and brush, in
pretty satin shoes, across a lawn on which the moonlight fell. Besides, a
girl whose skin was fair and whose movements were strangely graceful had
flitted about his room. While he puzzled over this he went to sleep and
on waking saw with a start of pleasure Jake sitting near his bed. His
nurse had gone.

"Hullo!" he said. "I'm glad you've come. There are a lot of things I want
to know."

"The trouble is I've been ordered not to tell you much. It's a comfort to
see you looking brighter."

"I feel pretty well. But can you tell me where I am and how I got there?"

"Certainly. We'll take the last question first. Somebody tore off a
shutter and we carried you on it. I guess you know you got a dago's knife
between your ribs."

"I seem to remember something like that," said Dick; who added with
awkward gratitude: "I believe the brutes would have killed me if you
hadn't been there."

"It was a pretty near thing. Does it strike you as curious that while you
made yourself responsible for me I had to take care of you?"

"You did so, anyhow," Dick remarked with feeling. "But go on."

"Somebody brought a Spanish doctor, who said you couldn't be moved much
and must be taken into the nearest house, so we brought yo