"Yes, but improving very fast. It's a man, thank goodness—a brave man, too. I seem to prefer to nurse a man, for they are so much more patient than women. Not so delicate, you know, and they have more fortitude. But I must confess I've nursed women, too, who were remarkable!" exclaimed Mrs. Duke. "Do you live hereabouts?" she asked in a naïve sort of way.
"No, I still live in Patchogue," replied Winifred, dreamily. "It is so beautiful here, almost like heaven. I wonder if one could always be happy with every craving of the heart entirely satisfied?"
"Positively not, unless the right man is at hand. The man I'm nursing now is such a gentleman! Oh, dear—a week or so, and away he goes to his home of plenty, while I go back to my poor little tenement. Rents are so awful, aren't they?"
"We have never rented—father and mother always owned a little home, and since she died, we've continued to live there. I love the little place!" said Winifred, looking far out beyond the bay.
"Of course you do, my dear child," purred Mrs. Duke, arising to go back to her charge. "I hope I'll meet you here to-morrow, Miss Barbour, when I come out for my airing. It's desperately trying to have no one to talk to."
"Thank you, Mrs. Duke, I'll try to be on hand," was Winifred's reply, as the nurse sighed and arose to go.
"That's a dear—you can't imagine the dreariness of a life like mine," sighed the nurse, turning to go.
On hearing Mrs. Duke's story, Parkins' mind fairly sizzled with plans. It was a case of now or never so far as Winifred was concerned. He figured that no matter how much she might be frightened at the plans he had in mind, that she would calm down, once she saw how much he really cared for her—and the risk he took to save her from the fate of becoming the bride of a man so many years her senior.
"Youth for the young—age cannot hold out against it," he soliloquized. "Now for a plan of action," said he, in lowered voice, to Mrs. Duke.