temporal world
in his own chosen fashion was too much for Sheila's sense of the
grotesque. She threw back her head and laughed. Peal after peal rang out
and over the transom of the superintendent's office just as Miss Jacobs
passed.

It took no great powers of penetration to identify the laugh; a look of
satisfaction crept into the green eyes. "Quite dramatic and brutally
unfeeling I call it," she murmured. "But it will make an entertaining
story to tell Mr. Brooks. He thinks Leerie is such a little tinseled
saint."

Ten minutes later Sheila O'Leary followed Miss Maxwell into the large
tower room of the sanitarium to relieve Miss Barry from duty. As she took
her first look from the doorway she almost forgot herself and laughed
again. The room might have been a scene set for a farce or a comic opera.

Propped up in bed, with multitudinous pillows about him, was a very
mammoth of a man in heliotrope-silk pajamas. His face was as round and
full and bucolic as a poster advertising some specific brew of beer.
Surmounting the face was a sparse fringe of white hair standing erect,
while an isolated lock mounted guard over a receding forehead. It was
evident that the natural expression of the face was good-natured,
indulgent, easygoing, but at the moment of Sheila's entrance it was
contorted into something that might have served for a cartoon of a
choleric full moon. The eyes were rolling frantically in every direction
but that from which the presumable infliction came, for seated at the
bedside, with a booklet of evening prayer open on her lap, was Miss Barry,
reading aloud in a sweet, gentle voice.

Miss Barry did not stop until she had finished her paragraph. The
cessation of her voice brought the roving eyes to a standstill; then they
flew straight to Miss Maxwell in abject appeal. "Take it away, ma'am.
Don't hurt it--but take it away!" The articulation was thick, but it did
not mask the wail in the voice, and a gigantic thumb jerked indicatively
toward the patient, asserting figure of Miss Barry.

"All right, Mr. Brandle." Miss Maxwell's tone showed neither conciliation
nor pity; it was plainly matter-of-fact. "As it happens, I've brought you
a new nurse. Suppose you try Miss O'Leary for the next day or two."

The wail broke out afresh: "How can I tell if I can stand her? They all
look alike--all of 'em. You're the fourth, ain't you?" He turned to the
nurse at his bedside for corroboration.

"Then I'm the fifth,"