can't see without my specs."

At this point something in the attitude of the two struck her,
something that her instincts told her was uncommon, and she stood
irresolute. Isobel stepped to her as though to take the list, and,
bending down, whispered into her ear.

"What?" said Mrs. Parsons. "Surely I didn't understand; you know I'm
getting deaf as well as blind. Say the name again."

Isobel obeyed, still in a whisper.

"_Him_!" exclaimed the old woman, "him! Our Godfrey, and you've been
and let on who you were--you who call yourself a nursing Commandant?
Why, I dare say you'll be the death of him. Out you go, Miss, anyway;
I'll take charge of this case for the present," and as it seemed to
Godfrey, watching from the far corner, literally she bundled Isobel
from the room.

Then she shut and locked the door. Coming to the bedside she knelt down
rather stiffly, looked at him for a while to make sure, and kissed him,
not once, but many times.

"So you have come back, my dear," she said, "and only half dead. Well,
we won't have no young woman pushing between you and me just at
present, Commandant or not. Time enough for love-making when you are
stronger. Oh! and I never thought to see you again. There must be a
good God somewhere after all, although He did make them Germans."

Then again she fell to kissing and blessing him, her hot tears dropping
on his face and upsetting him ten times as much as Isobel had done.

Since in this topsy-turvy world often things work by contraries, oddly
enough no harm came to Godfrey from these fierce excitements. Indeed he
slept better than he had done since he found his mind again, and awoke,
still weak of course, but without any temperature or pains in his head.
Now it was that there began the most blissful period of all his life.
Isobel, when she had recovered her balance, made him understand that he
was a patient, and that exciting talk or acts must be avoided. He on
his part fell in with her wishes, and indeed was well content to do so.
For a while he wanted nothing more than just to lie there and watch her
moving in and out of his room, with his food or flowers, or whatever it
might be, for a burst of bad weather prevented him from going out of
doors. Then, as he strengthened she began to talk to him (which Mrs.
Parsons did long before that event), telling him all that for years he
had longed to know; no, not all, but some things. Among other matters
she described to him the de