"Not July!"
"No. Nor August!"
He raised himself on his pillow and stared at her in questioning amazement.
"Not July? Not August? Then——?"
She took his hand between her own kind warm palms, stroking it soothingly up and down.
"It's not July, and it's not August!" she repeated, nodding at him as though he were a worried and fractious child—"It's the second week in September. There!"
His eyes turned from right to left in utter bewilderment. "But how——" he murmured——
Then he suddenly caught her hands in the one she was holding.
"You mean to say that I have been ill all those weeks—a burden upon you?"
"You've been ill all those weeks—yes!" she answered "But you haven't been a burden. Don't you think it! You've—you've been a pleasure!" And her blue eyes filled with soft tears, which she quickly mastered and sent back to the tender source from which they sprang; "You have, really!"