that's you?"

The ready retort with which she had learned to parry these personalities
was not forthcoming. She felt as she had that day five years ago in his
father's office, when she told him what she thought of him. He smiled up
at her with the same irresponsible light in his brown eyes, the same
eager desire to sidestep the disagreeable, the old refusal to accept life
seriously. He was such a boy despite his twenty-six years. Such a
spoiled, selfish lovable boy!

With a sudden rush of pity, she went to him and took his hand:

"See here, Mr. Mac," she said very gravely, "I got to tell you
something. Dr. Adair wanted to tell you from the first, but your mother
headed him off."

He shot a swift glance at her.

"What do you mean, Nance?"

Then Nance sat on the side of his bed and explained to him, as gently and
as firmly as she could, the very serious nature of his illness,
emphasizing the fact that his one chance for recovery lay in complete
surrender to a long and rigorous regime of treatment.

From scoffing incredulity, he passed to anxious skepticism and then to
agonized conviction. It was the first time he had ever faced any
disagreeable fact in life from which there was no appeal, and he cried
out in passionate protest. If he was a "lunger" he wanted to die as soon
as possible. He hated those wheezy chaps that went coughing through life,