CHAPTER XVII
Bonnie Brentwood was awake and expecting him, the nurse said. She lay propped up by pillows, draped about with a dainty, frilly dressing-sacque that looked too frivolous for Nurse Wright, yet could surely have come from no other source. The golden hair was lying in two long braids, one over each shoulder, and there was a faint flush of expectancy on her pale cheeks.
"You have been so good to me!" she said. "It has been wonderful for a stranger to go out of his way so much."
"Please don't let's talk about that!" said Courtland. "It's been only a pleasure to be of service. Now I want to know how you are. I've been expecting to hear that you had pneumonia or something dreadful after that awful exposure."
"Oh, I've been through a good deal more than that," said the girl, trying to speak lightly. "Things don't seem to kill me. I've had quite a lot of hard times."
"I'm afraid you have," he said, gravely. "Somehow it doesn't seem fair that you should have had such a rotten time of it, and I be lying around enjoying myself. Shouldn't everybody be treated alike in this world? I confess I don't understand it."
Bonnie smiled feebly. "Oh, it's all right!" she said, with conviction. "'In the world ye shall have tribulation, but fear not, I have overcome the world,' you know. It's our testing-time, and this world isn't the only part of life."
"Well, but I don't see how that answers my point," said Courtland, pleasantly. "What's the idea? Don't you think I am worth the testing?"
"Oh, surely, but you may not need the same kind I did."