"These people certainly know how to play the game all right," he
reasoned whimsically, noting even the consistent little letter "M"
embroidered in one corner of the handkerchief.

Then, because he was really very sick and really very tired, he
snuggled down into the new blessed warmth and turned his gaunt cheek
to the pillow and cupped his hand for sleep like a drowsy child with
its nose and mouth burrowed eagerly down into the expectant draught.
But the cup did not fill.--Yet scented deep in his curved, empty,
balsam-scented fingers lurked--somehow--somewhere--the dregs of a
wonderful dream: Boyhood, with the hot, sweet flutter of summer woods,
and the pillowing warmth of the soft, sunbaked earth, and the crackle
of a twig, and the call of a bird, and the drone of a bee, and the
great blue, blue mystery of the sky glinting down through a
green-latticed canopy overhead.

For the first time in a whole, cruel tortuous week he actually smiled
his way into his morning nap.

When he woke again both the sun and the Doctor were staring pleasantly
into his face.

"You look better!" said the Doctor. "And more than that you don't look
half so 'cussed cross'."

"Sure," grinned Stanton, with all the deceptive, undauntable optimism
of the Just-Awakened.

"Nevertheless," continued the Doctor more soberly, "there ought to be