"Then, why doesn't the Staff do it?"

The Senior Surgical Interne was still feeling very tall. He looked
down at her from a great distance.

"Because, dear child," he said, "it's your man's case. You ought to
know enough about professional ethics for that."

He went away, then, and had a violent headache, which he blamed on
confinement and lack of exercise. But he had sowed something in the
Probationer's mind.

For she knew, suddenly, that he had been right. The Staff had meant
that, then, when they looked at Johnny and shook their heads. The
Staff knew, the hospital knew. Every one knew but Doctor Willie. But
Doctor Willie had the case. Back in her little town Johnny's mother
was looking to Doctor Willie, believing in him, hoping through him.

That night Twenty-two slept, and Jane Brown lay awake. And down in H
ward Johnny Fraser had a bad spell at that hour toward dawn when the
vitality is low, and men die. He did not die, however. But the night
nurse recorded, "Pulse very thin and iregular," at four o'clock.

She, too, was not a famous speller.

During the next morning, while the ward rolled bandages, having
carefully scrubbed its hands first, Jane Brown wrote records--she
did it rather well now--and then arranged the pins in the ward
pincushion. She made concentric circles of safety-pins outside and