sweet of you!" said the pouting red lips with embarrassing ardor.
"Just think of your walking out here this awful day at your age. Quite
sure you are getting warm?"

Yes, Miss Mink was warm, but she felt suddenly old, old and shrivelled
beside this radiant young thing.

"I perfectly adore going to the hospital," said the girl, her blue eyes
dancing. "Father's one of the medical directors, Major Chalmers, I
expect you've heard of him. I'm Lois Chalmers."

But Miss Mink was scarcely listening. She was comparing the big luscious
looking oranges in the crate, with the hard little apples in her own
basket.

"Here we are!" cried Lois, as the car plowed through the snow and mud
and stopped in front of a long shed-like building. Two orderlies sprang
forward with smiling alacrity and began unloading the boxes.

"Aren't you the nicest ever?" cried Lois with a skillful smile that
embraced them both. "Those to the medical, those to the surgical, and
these to my little fat-faced Mumpsies."

Miss Mink got herself and her basket out unassisted, then stood in doubt
as to what she should do next. She wanted to thank Miss Chalmers for her
courtesy, but two dapper young officers had joined the group around her
making a circle of masculine admirers.

Miss Mink slipped away unnoticed and presented herself at the door
marked "Administration Building."

"Can you tell me where the broken-legged soldiers are?" she asked
timidly of a man at a desk.

"Who do you want to see?"

"Alexis Bowinski. He come from Russia. He's got curly hair and big sort
of sad eyes, and--"

"Bowinski," the man repeated, running his finger down a ledger, "A.
Bowinski, Surgical Ward 5-C. Through that door, two corridors to the
right midway down the second corridor."

Miss Mink started boldly forth to follow directions, but it was not
until she had been ejected from the X-ray Room, the Mess Hall, and the
Officers' Quarters, that she succeeded in reaching her destination. By
that time her courage was at its lowest ebb. On either side of the long
wards were cots, on which lay men in various stages of undress. Now Miss
Mink had seen pajamas in shop windows, she had even made a pair once of
silk for an ambitious groom, but this was the first time she had ever
seen them, as it were, occupied.

So acute was her embarrassment that she might have turned back at the
last moment, had her eyes not fallen on the cot nearest the door. There,
lying asleep, with his in