compromised on the promise that she would be allowed to watch over him
the whole of the next day. In spite of the jar of jelly, the doctor
chose Mrs. Bolum to help him that night, and when I left them the old
woman was sitting in a rocker at the bedside, her eyes watching every
movement of the sleeping patient's drawn face.

[Illustration: The main thing was proper nursing.]

Outside, the wind was whistling. The steady heating of an oak branch
on the porch roof told me it was blowing hard. It sounded cold. Mary
stood tiptoe to reach my collar and turn it up. Then she buttoned me
snug around the neck. It was the first time a woman had ever done that
for me. How good it was! I absently turned the collar down again and
tore my coat open. Then I smiled.

Again she raised herself tiptoe before me, and with a hand on each
shoulder, she stood looking from her eyes into mine.

"You fraud!" she cried.

Then I laughed. Lord, how I laughed! Twenty-four years I had lived,
and until now I had never known a real joke, one that made the heart
beat quicker, and sent the blood singing through the veins; that made
the fingers tingle, the ears burn, and brought tears to the eyes. I
don't suppose that other people would have thought this one so amusing.
The young doctor upstairs might not have feigned a smile, for instance.
That was what made it all the better for me, for it was my own joke and
Mary's, and in all the world I was the only man who could see the fun
of it.