requires nursing. What I wanted the doctors to do was to fix me up,
so that I could go on at home. I'd have taken anything they'd have
given me, and as many times a day. I wanted to be right there; I had
my reasons; I have them still. But I came off all the same," said my
friend, with a melancholy smile.

I was a great deal younger than he, but there was something so simple
and communicative in his tone, so expressive of a desire to
fraternise, and so exempt from any theory of human differences, that
I quite forgot his seniority, and found myself offering him paternal
I advice. "Don't think about all that," said I. "Simply enjoy
yourself, amuse yourself, get well. Travel about and see Europe. At
the end of a year, by the time you are ready to go home, things will
have improved over there, and you will be quite well and happy."

My friend laid his hand on my knee; he looked at me for some moments,
and I thought he was going to say, "You are very young!" But he said
presently, "YOU have got used to Europe any way!"



CHAPTER III.



At breakfast I encountered his ladies--his wife and daughter. They
were placed, however, at a distance from me, and it was not until the
pensionnaires had dispersed, and some of them, according to custom,
had come out into the garden, that he had an opportunity of making me
acquainted with them.