vigorously than ever over her shoulder.

I heard her call softly to some one. The some one
answered with a sharp little cry that sounded like,
"Conscious!"

The next moment my own sister Norah came quietly into
the room, and knelt at the side of my bed and took me in
her arms. It did not seem at all surprising that she
should be there, patting me with reassuring little love
pats, murmuring over me with her lips against my check,
calling me a hundred half-forgotten pet names that I had
not heard for years. But then, nothing seemed to
surprise me that surprising day. Not even the sight of
a great, red-haired, red-faced, scrubbed looking man who
strolled into the room just as Norah was in the midst of
denouncing newspapers in general, and my newspaper in
particular, and calling the city editor a slave-driver and
a beast. The big, red-haired man stood regarding us tolerantly.

"Better, eh?" said he, not as one who asks a
question, but as though in confirmation of a thought.
Then he too took my wrist between his fingers. His touch
was very firm and cool. After that he pulled down my
eyelids and said, "H'm." Then he patted my cheek smartly
once or twice. "You'll do," he pronounced. He picked up
a sheet of paper from the table and looked it over,
keen-eyed. There followed a clinking of bottles and
glasses, a few low-spoken words to the nurse, and then,
as she left the room the big red-haired man seated