ad left
under a cloud, and in similar cases a cloud, once gathered, grows until it
envelops, suffocates, and finally annihilates the person. As a graduate
nurse she would have ceased to exist. But in spite of the most blighting
circumstances, those who counted most believed in her and trusted her.
They had only waited for time to forget and tongues to stop wagging, and
then they had called her back. Perhaps the strangest thing about it was
that Sheila did not look like a person who could have had even the
smallest, fleeciest of clouds brushing her most distant horizon. In fact,
so vital, warm, and glowing was her personality, so radiant her nature,
that she seemed instead a permanent dispeller of clouds.

From across the pond Hennessy watched her with adoring eyes as he gave his
habitual, final bang to the bread-platter and the hitch to his corduroys
preparatory to leaving. To his way of thinking, there was no nurse
enrolled on the books of the old San who could compare with her. In the
beginning he had prophesied great things of her to Flanders, the
bus-driver. "Ye mind what I'm tellin' ye," he had said. "Afore she's
finished her trainin' she'll have more lads a-dandtherin' round her than
if she'd been the King of Ireland's only daughter. Ye can take my word for
it, when she leaves here, 'twill be a grand home of her own she'll be
goin' to an' no dirty hospital."

That had been three years ago, and Hennessy sighed now over the utter
futility of his words. "Sure, who could have been seein' that one o' the
lads would have turned blackguard? Hennessy knows. Just give the lass time
for that hurt to heal, an' she'll be winnin' a home of her own, after
all." This he muttered to himself as he took the path leading toward the
rest-house.

Sheila saw him coming, his lips shirred to the closeness of some emotional
strain. "Hello, Hennessy! What's troubling?" she called down the path.

"Faith, it's Mr. Peter Brooks that's troublin'. 'Tis a week, now, that
ye've been off that case--an' he's near cured. Another week now--"

"In another week he'll be going back to his work--and I'll be very glad."

Hennessy eyed the girl narrowly. "Will ye, then? Why did ye cure him up so
fast for, Miss Leerie? Why didn't ye give the poor man a chance?"

No one but Hennessy would have had sufficient temerity for such a
question, but had any one dared to ask it, upon their heads would have
fallen the combined anger and bitterness of Sheila's to