"Surely not."

"All right. Are you in on it?"

"I'm 'in,'" replied Rose, slowly, "on anything and everything that human
power can do, day or night, until we come to the last ditch."

"Good for you. I'll appoint you first lieutenant. I guess that nurse is
all right, though she doesn't seem to be unduly optimistic."

"She's had nothing to make her so. Everything has been discouraging so
far."

"Plenty of discouragement in the world," he observed, "handed out free
of charge, without paying people to bring it into the house when you're
peevish."

"Very true," she answered, then her eyes filled. "Oh," she breathed,
with white lips, "if you can--if you only can--"

"We'll have a try for it," he said, then continued, kindly: "no salt
water upstairs, you know."

"I know," she sighed, wiping her eyes.

"Then 'on with the dance--let joy be unconfined.'"

Rose obediently went back to the piano. The arrival of the trunk and the
composition of a hopeful telegram to Colonel Kent occupied the
resourceful visitor for ten or fifteen minutes. Then he went back to his