ever learned in detail how Senor Machado became reconciled
to a live son, not being present when the news was conveyed to him. They
saw him arrive, however, looking very much shaken with his bereavement,
and they saw him depart with his son perched high upon his shoulder,
wearing the expression of one who has come unexpectedly into a great
possession, while the senora clung to them both. The sanitarium waved them
off with gladness and satisfaction--all but four unsmiling outsiders. So
great a hole can a departing atom sometimes leave behind that those four
who had given him temporary care and guardianship went about for days with
sorrow written plainly upon them. Hennessy fed the swans in bitter
silence; Peter moped, with a laugh for no one; Doctor Fuller groaned
whenever South America was mentioned; while all three knew they could not
even fathom the deepness or the bigness of that hole for Sheila.

Peter took her for a twilight ride in his car the first empty night. "Go
on and cry it out--I sha'n't mind," he urged as he speeded the car along a
country road.

Sheila smiled faintly. "Thank you--can't. Just feel bruised and banged all
over--feel as if I needed a plunge in that old pool of Bethesda."

They spun on in silence for a few miles more before Sheila spoke again. "I
learned one wonderful thing from Pancho--something I never felt sure of
before."

"What was that?"

"Sorry--can't tell. It's the sort of thing you tell only the man you
marry, after you've discovered he's the only man you ever could have
married."

Peter speeded the car ahead and smiled quietly into the gathering
darkness. Fortunately he was not an impatient man.

There is one point concerning the atom that Hennessy and Doctor Fuller
still wrangle over, neither of them having the slightest conception of the
other's point of view.

"That was a case of good nursing and milk," the old doctor persists.

While Hennessy beats the air with his fists and shouts: "Nothing of the
sort! 'Twas egg-shells that done it."

Chapter IV

FOR THE HONOR OF THE SAN

Peter Brooks paced the sanitarium grounds like a man possessed. Hands
thrust deep into pockets, teeth hard clenched, head bare, the raw October
wind ruffling his heavy crop of hair like a cock's comb. So suggestive was
the resemblance that Hennessy, watching him from the willow stump by the
pond, was forced to remark to Brian Boru, the gray swan, that Mr. Peter
looked like a young rooste