"Don't let that noise bother you," he said; "that's only the convalescent typhoid banging for his breakfast. He's been shouting for food ever since I came at six last night."
"Is it safe to feed him so much?"
"I don't know. He hasn't had anything yet. Perhaps if you're ready you'd better fix him something."
Jane had finished her bread and tea by this time and remembered her kimono.
"I'll go back and dress," she said primly. But he wouldn't hear of it.
"He's starving," he objected as a fresh volley of thumps came along the hall. "I've been trying at intervals since daylight to make him a piece of toast. The minute I put it on the fire I think of something I've forgotten, and when I come back it's in flames."
So Jane cut some bread and put on eggs to boil, and the red-haired person told his story.
"You see," he explained, "although I appear to be a furnace man from the waist up and an interne from the waist down, I am really the new superintendent."
"I hope you'll do better than the last one," she said severely. "He was always flirting with the nurses."
"I shall never flirt with the nurses," he promised, looking at her. "Anyhow I shan't have any immediate chance. The other fellow left last night and took with him everything portable except the ambulance—nurses, staff, cooks. I wish to Heaven he'd taken the patients! And he did more than that. He cut the telephone wires!"