porch, and sat down rather heavily and twirled a cigar in his
fingers without lighting it. Mary V pulled a magazine toward her and
began turning the leaves idly, her lips pressed tight together, her ears
strained and listening still.

Ages passed. Twice Mary V placed her fingers over her lips to stifle an
impulse to scream. Then--

"We can't make it. Damn that brush," said a new voice--Johnny's
voice--quite clearly.

Mary V dropped the magazine and went and put her arms around her dad's
neck and pressed her face hard against his shoulder. Her dad held her
tight, and swallowed fast, and said never a word.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

JOHNNY'S DILEMMA

"Well, thank heavens she's gone! Perhaps a person can have a minute or
two of peace and comfort on this ranch now. I don't know when I have ever
disliked a person so much. I don't see how you stood her. For my part,
that creature would _make_ me sick, just having her around!" As a final
venting of her animosity, Mary V made faces at the car that carried the
nurse hack to town.

Johnny looked at Mary V, looked after the nurse, and looked at Mary V
again. He had thought the nurse a very nice nurse, with a quiet kind of
efficiency that soothed a fellow without any fuss or frills. It was queer
Mary V did not like her, but then--

"I know I've been a darned nuisance," he apologized so meekly that he did
not sound in the least like Johnny Jewel. "But I'm getting well fast.
I'll be able to beat it in a few days now."

"Why, for gracious sake? Haven't we--er--made you _comfortable_?"

"Sure, you have. Only you shouldn't have put yourselves out, this way.
I ought to have gone to a hospital or some place." Johnny looked so
distressed that Mary V could have cried. Only she was afraid that would
distress him still more, and the doctor had said he must not be worried
about anything.

"It wasn't any trouble. You are being absolutely silly, so I guess you
are getting well, all right. I--I didn't see any sense of having that
nurse in the first place. Because I can take temperature and count pulse
and everything. I've really been crazy for a chance to practice nursing
on somebody. And then when I had the chance, they wouldn't let me do a
thing."

Johnny grinned, which was rather pathetic--he was so thin and so white.
"Why didn't you practice on the greasers?" he taunted her. "Bill says you
sure made some dandy work for the hospitals."

"Well, I couldn't help that. I didn'