He was a trifle puzzled at her distress, for she made no secret of
Johnny's status in the community. What he did not grasp was that
Johnny Fraser was a link between this new and rather terrible world
of the hospital and home. It was not Johnny alone, it was Johnny
scrubbing a home porch and doing it badly, it was Johnny in her
father's old clothes, it was Johnny fishing for catfish in the
creek, or lending his pole to one of the little brothers whose
pictures were on her table in the dormitory.

Twenty-two felt a certain depression. He reflected rather grimly
that he had been ten days missing and that no one had apparently
given a hang whether he turned up or not.

"Is he going to live?" he inquired. He could see that the ward nurse
had an eye on him, and was preparing for retreat.

"O yes," said Jane Brown. "I think so now. The _interne_ says they
have had a message from Doctor Willie. He is coming." There was a
beautiful confidence in her tone.

Things moved very fast with the Probationer for the next twenty-four
hours. Doctor Willie came, looking weary but smiling benevolently.
Jane Brown met him in a corridor and kissed him, as, indeed, she had
been in the habit of doing since her babyhood.

"Where is the young rascal?" said Doctor Willie. "Up to his old
tricks, Nellie, and struck by a train." He put a hand under her
chin, which is never done to the members of the training school in a
hospital, and searched her face with his kind old eyes. "Well, how
does it go, Nellie?"