tion before
I go. Have you heard anybody inquiring after you, for the last day or
two, outside your door? Ah! I see you have. A word in your ear, my dear.
That's Mr. Kirke." He tripped away from the bedside as briskly as ever.
Magdalen heard him advertising himself to the nurse before he closed
the door. "If you are ever asked about it," he said, in a confidential
whisper, "the name is Wragge, and the Pill is to be had in neat boxes,
price thirteen pence half-penny, government stamp included. Take a few
copies of the portrait of a female patient, whom you might have blown
away with a feather before she took the Pill, and whom you are simply
requested to contemplate now. Many thanks. _Good_-morning."

The door closed and Magdalen was alone again. She felt no sense of
solitude; Captain Wragge had left her with something new to think of.
Hour after hour her mind dwelt wonderingly on Mr. Kirke, until the
evening came, and she heard his voice again through the half-opened
door.

"I am very grateful," she said to him, before the nurse could answer his
inquiries--"very, very grateful for all your goodness to me."

"Try to get well," he replied, kindly. "You will more than reward me, if
you try to get well."

The next morning Mr. Merrick found her impatient to leave her bed, and
be moved to the sofa in the front room. The doctor said he supposed
she wanted a change. "Yes," she replied; "I want to see Mr. Kirke." The
doctor consented to move her on the next day, but he positively forbade
the additional excitement of seeing anybody until the day after. She
attempted a remonstrance--Mr. Merrick was impenetrable. She tried, when
he was gone, to win the nurse by persuasion--the nurse was impenetrable,
too.

On the next day they wrapped her in shawls, and carried her in to the
sofa, and made her a little bed on it. On the table near at hand were
some flowers and a number of an illustrated paper. She immediately asked
who had put them there. The nurse (failing to notice a warning look from
the doctor) said Mr. Kirke had thought that she might like the flowers,
and that the pictures in the paper might amuse her. After that reply,
her anxiety to see Mr. Kirke became too ungovernable to be trifled with.
The doctor left the room at once to fetch him.

She looked eagerly at the opening door. Her first glance at him as he
came in raised a doubt in her mind whether she now saw that tall figure
and that open sun-burned face for the f