gets more lantern-jawed and obstreperous every day."

"Leave him to me!" said Monck. "Discharge him as cured! I'll manage
him."

"But that's just what he isn't," grumbled Ralston. "He ought to be well.
So far as I can make out, he is well. But he goes about looking like a
sick fly and stinging before you touch him."

"Leave him to me!" Monck said again.

That afternoon as he and Tommy lounged together on the verandah after
the lazy fashion of convalescents, he turned to the boy in his abrupt
fashion.

"Look here, Tommy!" he said. "What are you making yourself so
conspicuously unpleasant for? It's time you pulled up."

Tommy turned crimson. "I?" he stammered. "Who says so? Stella?"

There was the suspicion of a smile about Monck's grim mouth as he made
reply. "No; not Stella, though she well might. I've heard you being
beastly rude to her more than once. What's the matter with you? Want a
kicking, eh?"

Tommy hunched himself in his wicker chair with his chin on his chest.
"No, want to kick," he said in a savage undertone.

Monck laughed briefly. He was standing against a pillar of the verandah.
He turned and sat down unexpectedly on the arm of Tommy's chair. "Who do