oks to be so sick I
couldn't hold your hand!"

"Silly!" said Helen, blushing. "If you will attend with the gravity
the occasion requires, I will explain things to you. Perhaps Tony has
been able to hold my hand a _little_; but he was not strong enough to
hold it very hard. Now, however, he is growing better fast. On the
other hand, the doctors say _I_ am worn out. I don't think so myself.
I think they are making it up, the dears, so I can honorably go home
with Tony. But be that as it may, I am going home. We are going to be
married a week from tomorrow, John, dear, and then in a few days I will
begin to move my dear Tony by slow stages homeward. And I want you to
come with us."

"Me on a honeymoon trip? Well, I think not!" Zaidos exploded. "Nay,
nay, pretty lady, you won't get me to chaperone you!"

"Now, John!" cried Helen. "Oh, I could shake you! What will I do
crossing Europe with a sick man on a cot, unless someone comes to help
me? I didn't think you were so ungallant!"

Zaidos stared at her. "That's another way to look at it," he said.
"Of course I will go with you, and glad enough to do it. I never
thought of that, Helen. Of course you could not go alone! Why can't I
get up and go talk things over with Tony? You can't yell that sort of
conversation the whole length of a ward."

"You are to be allowed to get up tomorrow," said Helen, "and, oh, John,
_please_ get well fast, because really I don't see how we can go
without you. No one else can be spared, and I want to go home. I want
to see my father and mother. Just think of it, I will have to be
married all alone. Not one of my own people to give me away, and kiss
me, and say, 'God bless you.' I suppose I am an ungrateful girl. I
ought to be thinking only that I have Tony, and how happy I am; but you
know after all, John, a girl's wedding day is a wonderful time. It is
all so different to what we had planned. At home, we would have had
the service in our own dear church, trimmed by all the little girls in
the parish. And everyone would be there. The church would not hold
them; the churchyard would be full of beaming faces, everybody bobbing
and curtsying and wishing us good luck. And if I felt that I _must_
shed a few happy tears, my mother's shoulder would be near."

"Do you _have_ to cry?" asked Zaidos.

"Why, I don't suppose one _has_ to," said Helen musingly, "but
generally you do."

"That's awful," said Zaidos dismally,