"It's very good of you. It's particularly hard for us--the little chap's first term, and his people so far away. It will be an inexpressible comfort to me to think that some kind woman----"
Tony's voice gave out, and he turned away just as Ford came in to announce that Miss Foster's cab was at the door.
Tarrant dozed and dreamed and then came back to realities with a start; and the queer light feeling of being suspended in space became so acute that he plucked at the sheet to assure himself that there was a bed and that he was lying in it.
A very firm hand closed over his; a smooth hand and soft, but yet with a purposeful quality about it that seemed to send a little intangible current of some kind through his arm right to his very brain, so that he was seized by a quite definite curiosity as to the personality belonging to the hand.
Lazily he opened his tired eyes and looked along the sheet at the hand covering his own.
It was white, with particularly well-tended nails: surely, too, the rings were familiar. He was certain he had seen those rings before, and had noticed them in the sub-conscious way one does observe such things.
It seemed far too great an effort to raise his eyes so that he could take in the entire figure that sat beside his bed, so he contented himself with looking along the sleeve that belonged to the hand--a grey linen sleeve, and the nurses wore pale blue. Who could this be? With a mighty effort Tarrant lifted his eyes and at the same moment gasped out "Germs!"
It was a very faint little gasp, and Miss Foster, being unaware of her nickname among the boys, thought he said something about "terms," and concluded that he was worrying about his work, which was indeed the very last thing that Tarrant was ever concerned about.
She was about to take her hand away, when the hot little hand within it clutched at it feverishly.
"It's all right, my dear boy, I'm not going away," she said gently.