make him look prematurely in mourning," said Mrs. Hale, with a slight
increase of animation. "I don't propose to leave them too much together.
After dinner we'll adjourn to their room and lighten it up a little.
You must come, Kate, to look at the patient, and counteract the baleful
effects of my frivolity."

Mrs. Hale's instincts were truer than her mother's experience; not only
that the wounded man's eyes became brighter under the provocation of her
presence, but it was evident that his naturally exuberant spirits were
a part of his vital strength, and were absolutely essential to his quick
recovery. Encouraged by Falkner's grave and practical assistance, which
she could not ignore, Kate ventured to make an examination of Lee's
wound. Even to her unpractised eye it was less serious than at first
appeared. The great loss of blood had been due to the laceration of
certain small vessels below the knee, but neither artery nor bone was
injured. A recurrence of the haemorrhage or fever was the only thing to
be feared, and these could be averted by bandaging, repose, and simple
nursing.

The unfailing good humor of the patient under this manipulation, the
quaint originality of his speech, the freedom of his fancy, which was,
however, always controlled by a certain instinctive tact, began to
affect Kate nearly as it had the others. She found herself laughing over
the work she had undertaken in a pure sense of duty; she joined in the
hilarity produced by Lee's affected terror of her surgical mania, and
offered to undo the bandages in search of the thimble he declared she
had left in the wound with a view to further experiments.

"You ought to broaden your practice," he suggested. "A good deal might
be made out of Ned and a piece of soap left carelessly on the first step