God bless him ... Want to leave a call for seven sharp--"

The lank waitress's face took on an added blankness. One of the two
traveling men at the same table started to laugh, but the other put
out his hand quickly, rose, and said, "Shut up, you blamed fool! Can't
you see the lady's sick?" And started in the direction of her chair.

Even then there came into Emma McChesney's ordinarily well-ordered,
alert mind the uncomfortable thought that she was talking nonsense.
She made a last effort to order her brain into its usual sane
clearness, failed, and saw the coarse white table-cloth rising swiftly
and slantingly to meet her head.

[Illustration: "'Shut up, you blamed fool! Can't you see the lady's
sick?'"]

It speaks well for Emma McChesney's balance that when she found
herself in bed, two strange women, and one strange man, and an all-
too-familiar bell-boy in the room, she did not say, "Where am I? What
happened?" Instead she told herself that the amazingly and
unbelievably handsome young man bending over her with a stethoscope
was a doctor; that the plump, bleached blonde in the white shirtwaist
was the hotel housekeeper; that the lank ditto was a waitress; and
that the expression on the face of each was that of apprehension,
tinged with a pleasurable excitement. So she sat up, dislodging the
stethoscope, and ignoring the purpose of the thermometer which had
reposed under her tongue.

"Look here!" she said, addressing the doctor in a high, queer voice.
"I can't be sick, young man. Haven't time. Not just now. Put it off