"I tell you the boy is infatuated with that girl," Mr. Clarke warned his
wife from time to time.

"What nonsense!" Mrs. Clarke answered. "He is just amusing himself a bit.
He will forget her as soon as he gets out and about."

"But the girl?"

"Oh, she's too sensible to have any hopes of that kind. She really is
an exceptionally nice girl. Rather too frank in her speech, and
frequently ungrammatical and slangy, but I don't know what we should do
without her."

But even Mrs. Clarke's complacence was a bit shaken as the weeks slipped
away, and Mac's obsession became the gossip of the household. To be sure,
so long as Nance continued to regard the whole matter as a joke and
refused to take Mac seriously, no harm would be done. But that very
indifference that assured his adoring mother, at the same time piqued her
pride. That an ordinary trained nurse, born and brought up, Heaven knew
where, should be insensible to Mac's even transient attention almost
amounted to an impertinence. Quite unconsciously she began to break down
Nance's defenses.

"You must be very good to my boy, dear," she said one day in her gentle,
coaxing way. "I know he's a bit capricious and exacting at times. But we
can't afford to cross him now when he is just beginning to improve. He
was terribly upset last night when you teased him about leaving."

"But I ought to go, Mrs. Clarke. He'd get along just as well now with
another nurse. Besides I only promised--"