"Well?" demanded Billy Grant. "How long have I? Until morning?"
"If you would only not talk and excite yourself——"
"Hell!" said Billy Grant, we regret to record. "I've got to do all the talking I'm going to do right now. I beg your pardon—I didn't intend to swear."
"Oh, that's all right!" said the Nurse vaguely. This was like no deathbed she had ever seen, and it was disconcerting.
"Shall I read again?"
"No, thank you."
The Nurse looked at her watch, which had been graduation present from her mother and which said, inside the case: "To my little girl!" There is no question but that, when the Nurse's mother gave that inscription to the jeweller, she was thinking of the day when the Staff Doctor had brought the Nurse in his leather bag, and had slapped her between the shoulders to make her breathe. "To my little girl!" said the watch; and across from that—"Three o'clock."
At half-past three Billy Grant, having matured his plans, remarked that if it would ease the Nurse any he'd see a preacher. His voice was weaker again and broken.
"Not"—he said, struggling—"not that I think—he'll pass me. But—if you say so—I'll—take a chance."
All of which was diabolical cunning; for when, as the result of a telephone conversation, the minister came, an unworldly man who counted the world, an automobile, a vested choir and a silver communion service well lost for the sake of a dozen derelicts in a slum mission house, Billy Grant sent the Nurse out to prepare a broth he could no longer swallow, and proceeded to cajole the man of God. This he did by urging the need of the Nurse's small brother for an education and by forgetting to mention either the Lindley Grants or the extent of his property.