ut to Miss Gallifer it was the more the merrier, even
in the sickroom. The very fact of coming to close quarters with the
type she knew as a "society girl" added spice to the association.

For the first few seconds Barbara found her breeziness a shock. She
had expected something subdued, hushed, funereal. Miss Gallifer hardly
lowered her voice, which was naturally loud, or quieted her manner,
which, when off duty, could be boisterous. It was not boisterous now,
of course; only quick, free, spontaneous. Then Barbara saw the
reason.

There was no need to lower the voice or quiet the manner or soften the
swish of rustling to and fro, in presence of that still white form
composed in the very attitude of death. If Barbara hadn't known he was
alive she wouldn't have supposed it. She had seen dead men before--her
father, two brothers, other relatives. They looked like this; this
looked like them. She said _this_ to herself, and not _he_, because it
seemed the word.

But by the time she had moved forward and was standing by the bed Miss
Gallifer's businesslike tone became a comfort. You couldn't take such
a tone if you thought there was danger; and in spite of the hemming
and hawing of the doctors Miss Gallifer didn't think there was.

"Oh, I've seen lots of such cases, and _I_ say it's a simple
concussion. Old Wisdom, he doesn't know anything. I wouldn't consult
him about an accident to a cat. Laceration of the brain is always his
first diagnosis; and if the patient didn't have it he'd get it to him
before he'd admit that he was wrong."

Barbara put the question in which all her other questions were
enfolded. "Then you think he'll get better?"

"I shouldn't be surprised."

"Would you be surprised--the other way?"

"I think I should--on the whole. Pulse is poor. That's the worst
sign." She picked up the hand lying outside the coverlet and put her
finger-tips to the wrist, doing it with the easy nonchalant
carelessness with which she might have seized an inanimate object, yet
knowing exactly what she was about. "H'm! Fifty-six! That's pretty
low. If we could get it above sixty--but still!" Dropping the hand
with the same indifference, yet continuing to know what she was about,
Miss Gallifer tossed aside the index of the pulse as wholly
non-convincing. "I've known cases where the pulse would go down till
there was almost no pulse at all, and _yet_ it would come up again."

"So that you feel----?"

"Oh, he'll do. I sh