"Still hanging on the tree, boy, as far as you are concerned, I fancy," she replied, and tried again to give him his medicine. He knocked the spoon and glass to the far side of Room A-a.
But Miss Trivett was a very capable nurse, if lacking in personal pulchritude. She patiently prepared the draught again and, seizing his nose suddenly between thumb and finger, forced the dose down his throat.
"What do you know about that?" sputtered Sanderson. "You—you are own sister to that cranky old machine of mine! She slapped me——" and he rambled off into a repetition of the story of his accident.
His temperature was high, and Miss Trivett reported this to the doctor. It was a fight then for the aviator's life; but he did not realize how ill he was until, after a week or more, he came out of the Vale of Delirium in which he had wandered and beheld Belinda Melnotte clearly again.
"Say!"
The weakness of his voice so startled him that he almost lost consciousness before he could express his desire. The nurse was quickly at his side and, stooping, placed a firm hand upon his breast. Later he realized that the gesture betrayed the fact that the strong, beautiful hand had often held him down on his pillow while he was delirious.
"Say! I—I——When do I eat, Nurse?"
She smiled upon him, and Sanderson thought her face fairly glorified thereby.
"You may eat now if you feel like it."
"Bully!" he whispered. "Porterhouse steak and a mug of musty——"