Fellows.

Then a nurse was soothing, "All over! Perfect success! She'll come out
fine! She'll be out from under the anesthetic soon, and you can see
her."

He found her on a curious tilted bed, her face an unwholesome yellow but
her purple lips moving slightly. Then only did he really believe that
she was alive. She was muttering. He bent, and heard her sighing, "Hard
get real maple syrup for pancakes." He laughed inexhaustibly; he beamed
on the nurse and proudly confided, "Think of her talking about maple
syrup! By golly, I'm going to go and order a hundred gallons of it,
right from Vermont!"

II

She was out of the hospital in seventeen days. He went to see her each
afternoon, and in their long talks they drifted back to intimacy. Once
he hinted something of his relations to Tanis and the Bunch, and she was
inflated by the view that a Wicked Woman had captivated her poor George.

If once he had doubted his neighbors and the supreme charm of the Good
Fellows, he was convinced now. You didn't, he noted, "see Seneca Doane
coming around with any flowers or dropping in to chat with the Missus,"
but Mrs. Howard Littlefield brought to the hospital her priceless wine
jelly (flavored with real wine); Orville Jones spent hours in picking
out the kind of novels Mrs. Babbitt liked--nice love stories about New
York millionaries and Wyoming cowpunchers; Louetta Swanson knitted a
pink bed-jacket; Sidney Finkelstein and his merry brown-eyed flapper of
a wife selected the prettiest nightgown in all the stock of Parcher and
Stein.

All his friends ceased whispering about him, suspecting him. At the
Athletic Club they asked after her daily. Club members whose names he
did not know stopped him to inquire, "How's your good lady getting on?"
Babbitt felt that he was swinging from bleak uplands down into the rich
warm air of a valley pleasant with cottages.

One noon Vergil Gunch suggested, "You planning to be at the hospital
about six? The wife and I thought we'd drop in." They did drop in. Gunch
was so humorous that Mrs. Babbitt said he must "stop making her laugh
because honestly it was hurting her incision." As they passed down the
hall Gunch demanded amiably, "George, old scout, you were soreheaded
about something, here a while back. I don't know why, and it's none of
my business. But you seem to be feeling all hunky-dory again, and why
don't you come join us in the Good Citizens' League, old man? We have
some corking times