After a long, silent stare into nurse Brady’s face, Towsley asked:
“Be you? Where’s I at?”
“In a nice warm bed, all safe and sound, with a fine breakfast waiting for you.”
“Where’s it at, I say?”
“The hospital.”
“What for?”
“Because you must have been taking a little walk in the storm and got too tired to go very far. A kind man found you and brought you in here, and now if you’ll please drink this hot soup you’ll feel as fine as a fiddler!”
“Humph. I can fiddle—some, myself. Is the pie all gone? Oh! I mean—I—I—my head’s funny.”
“That will come right enough when you set your empty stomach to work. Afterward you will tell me your name and where you live, and I’ll send for your people. But the soup first.”
Towsley sat up against the nurse’s arm and obediently drank all the broth she offered him, even to the last drop. Then he lay back with a sigh of deep content and fell into a sound, refreshing sleep. When he awoke again the pretty nurse was gone and in her chair sat a gentleman gazing at him with a curious sort of stare, as if Towsley were some new kind of animal in whom the stranger was interested.