nstead came only for a moment daily, having a case of
her own to nurse, who was down, poor crumb, with those
measles-mumps-whooping cough of puppyhood, distemper.

On the day when Doctor Batoni had agreed that with prudence there would
be nothing more to fear, the patient might be regarded as having entered
convalescence, Aurora covered him with a wide and warming smile.

"_Je suis son bonne amie_," thus she translated the explanation of
her unconcealed happiness, "I'm a good friend of his," nodding at the
old man with the full sweetness of her dimples; blushing a little, too,
with the pride of addressing him directly in French.

That morning Aurora was so happy she could not hurry; humming an old
psalm tune she dawdled about her room, the longer to enjoy her thoughts.

When she finally slept it was more deeply than usual, and she woke with
a start of fear that it was past the time. The line of sky showing
between the curtains retained no remembrance of the day. It must be
late, certainly. Then she heard a faint stirring just outside her door,
the thing probably which had drawn her out of a sound sleep. It was the
rustle of some person listening at the crack.

She bounced from bed and went to open. It was as she expected, Giovanna;
come, she supposed, to see if she were ready to go on duty. At
Giovanna's first words, though she did not entirely understand them, she
became uneasy, because Giovanna interspersed them with sighs. Her voice
sounded as if she might have been crying.

Aurora had grown accustomed to the fact that those hard old eyes of
Giovanna's took easily to tears, and that she sighed by the thousand the
moment she was in anxiety over her _signorino_. She knew she must
not take Giovanna's fears at her own valuation. She gathered from her
gestures now, combined with her talk, that Gerald, so quiet until
to-day, had become restless. Giovanna impersonated him tossing and
throwing his arms out of the bed-covers. Aurora, though not permitting
herself to be alarmed, hurried with her dressing.

"Ain't it always so," she questioned her own image in the glass, "that
the moment you feel safe something goes wrong?"

When she tiptoed into the big dim room where Gerald lay, she could not
at first make out what it was that had troubled Giovanna to the point of
tears. He seemed quiet enough. After she had taken his pulse and
temperature, her heart subsided with a blessed relief.

He could not tell her, because he