"You are not in your nursing-dress now, Miss Brander, and I decline altogether to be lectured by you. I have been very good and obedient up to now, but I only bow to lawfully constituted authority, and now I come under the head of convalescent I intend to emancipate myself."
"I shall not come down here to see you unless I hear good accounts of your conduct," she said, with an attempt to speak playfully. "Well, good-bye, Cuthbert. I hope you will not try to do too much."
"Good-bye, dear, thanks for all your goodness to me," he said, earnestly, as he held her hand for a moment in his.
"He had no right to call me dear," Mary thought, almost indignantly, as he left the hospital, "and he does not guess I know why he is longing to be out again. I almost wonder he has never spoken to me about her. He would know very well that I should be interested in anything that concerns him, and I think he might have told me. I suppose he will bring her up some day and introduce her as his wife. Anyhow I am glad I know about it, and shall be able to take it as a matter of course."
Mary did not pay another visit to the ambulance. Now that she had given up her work she felt the reaction, and although she refused to take to her bed she passed her time sitting listless and weak in an easy-chair, paying but slight attention to Madame Michaud's talk, and often passing the greater part of the day in her own room.
Madame Michaud felt so uneasy about her that she went down to the ambulance and brought up Dr. Swinburne, who scolded Mary for not having sent for him before. He prescribed tonics, sent her up a dozen of wine from the hospital, ordered her to wrap herself up and sit at an open window for a time each day, and to make an effort to take a turn round the garden as soon as she felt strong enough to do so.
On his return to the ambulance the surgeon said carelessly to Cuthbert, who had now gained sufficient strength to be of considerable use as an assistant in the ward—
"I have been up to see your late nurse, Miss Brander. There is nothing serious the matter with her, but, as I thought likely would be the case, she has collapsed now that her work is over, and will need a good deal of care and attention to build her up again. You will be out in a few days now and I am sure it will do her good if you will go up and have a chat with her and cheer her up a bit. She is not in bed. My visit did her good; but she wants rousing, and remember if you can get her to laugh, and joke her about her laziness, it will do more good than by expressing your pity for her."
"I think I am well enough to be discharged now, Doctor,' Cuthbert said, eagerly.
"Yes, but you will have to be very careful for some time. You will want generous food, and I don't see how you are to get it outside."