u comfortable?"

"Quite--quite," he replied; but for the life of him he could not help
glancing at the window.

Nell suppressed a smile.

"Isn't it rather hot?" she said.

"Now you mention it, I--I think it is, rather," he assented. "I'll open
the window."

"No, no," said Nell. "I'll do it; you'll hurt your arm."

She opened the window.

"If--if there was a chair," he said hesitatingly. "I'm not used to a
sofa--and--I'm afraid you'll think me very ungrateful! Let me get the
chair. Thanks, thanks!" as she swiftly pulled the sofa out of the way
and put an easy-chair in its place.

"You see, it will be a change to sit up," he said apologetically.

Nell nodded. She quite understood his dislike of the part of interesting
invalid.

"And there's really nothing the matter with me, don't you know," he said
earnestly; "nothing but this arm, which doesn't exactly lame me. Won't
you sit down?"

Nell hesitated a moment, then took a chair at the other side of the
window.

"You've a splendid view here," he remarked, staring steadily out of the
window, for he felt rather than saw that the girl was a little shy--not
shy, but, rather, that she scarcely knew what to say.

"Oh, yes," she assented, in a voice in which there was certainly no
shyness. "There is a good view from all the windows; we are so high.
Won't you have your beef tea?"

"Certainly. I'd forgotten it. Don't get up. I'll----"

But Nell had got up before he could rise. As she brought the tray to him
he glanced up at her. He had been staring at the bedroom wall paper for
some days, and perhaps the contrast offered by Nell's fresh, young
loveliness made it seem all the fresher and more striking. There was
something in the curve of the lips, in the expression of the gray eyes,
a "sweet sadness," as the poet puts it, which impressed him.

"It's very good to be down again," he said. She had not gone back to her
chair, but leaned in the angle of the bay window, and looked down at the
village below. "I seem to have been in bed for ages."

She nodded.

"I know. I remember feeling like that when I got up after the measles,
years ago."

"Not many years ago," he suggested, with a faint smile.

"It seems a long time ago to me," said Nell. "I remember that for weeks
and months after I got well I hated the sight and smell of beef tea and
arrowroot. And Doctor Spence--your doctor, you know--gave me a glass of
ale one day, and stood over me while I drank it. He ca