a voice still stirred with feeling: "As I told you
this afternoon, Dr. Disbrow has said nothing in my hearing."

"And Mrs. Ogan?"

"Oh, Mrs. Ogan--" Her voice broke in a ripple of irony. "Mrs. Ogan
'feels it to be such a beautiful dispensation, my dear, that, owing to a
death that very morning in the surgical ward, we happened to have a bed
ready for the poor man within three hours of the accident.'" She had
exchanged her deep throat-tones for a high reedy note which perfectly
simulated the matron's lady-like inflections.

Amherst, at the change, turned on her with a boyish burst of laughter:
she joined in it, and for a moment they were blent in that closest of
unions, the discovery of a common fund of humour.

She was the first to grow grave. "That three hours' delay didn't help
matters--how is it there is no emergency hospital at the mills?"

Amherst laughed again, but in a different key. "That's part of the
larger question, which we haven't time for now." He waited a moment, and
then added: "You've not yet given me your own impression of Dillon's
case."

"You shall have it, if you saw that letter. Dillon will certainly lose
his hand--and probably the whole arm." She spoke with a thrilling of her
slight frame that transformed the dispassionate professional into a girl
shaken with indignant pity.

Amherst stood still before her. "Good God! Never anything but useless
lumber?"

"Never----"

"And he won't die?"

"Alas!"

"He has a consumptive wife and three children. She ruined her health
swallowing cotton-dust at the factory," Amherst continued.

"So she told me yesterday."

He turned in surprise. "You've had a talk with her?"

"I went out to Westmore last night. I was haunted by her face when she
came to the hospital. She looks forty, but she told me she was only
twenty-six." Miss Brent paused to steady her voice. "It's the curse of
my trade that it's always tempting me to interfere in cases where I can
do no possible good. The fact is, I'm not fit to be a nurse--I shall
live and die a wretched sentimentalist!" she ended, with an angry dash
at the tears on her veil.

Her companion walked on in silence till she had regained her composure.
Then he said: "What did you think of Westmore?"

"I think it's one of the worst places I ever saw--and I am not unused to
slums. It looks so dead. The slums of big cities are much more
cheerful."

He made no answer, and after a moment she asked: "Does the cotton-