"Listen to him, Miss Alice! Wouldn't you think, now, he'd let me
be the one to worry about that? Why, on my word, if your daddy
had his way, _I_ wouldn't be anywhere. He'd take all my worrying
and everything else off my shoulders and shove me right out of
Lamb and Company! He would!"

"It seems to me I've been soldiering on you a pretty long while,
Mr. Lamb," the convalescent said, querulously. "I don't feel
right about it; but I'll be back in ten days. You'll see."

The old man took his hand in parting. "All right; we'll see,
Virgil. Of course we do need you, seriously speaking; but we
don't need you so bad we'll let you come down there before you're
fully fit and able." He went to the door. "You hear, Miss
Alice? That's what I wanted to make the old feller understand,
and what I want you to kind of enforce on him. The old place is
there waiting for him, and it'd wait ten years if it took him
that long to get good and well. You see that he remembers it,
Miss Alice!"

She went down the stairs with him, and he continued to impress
this upon her until he had gone out of the front door. And even
after that, the husky voice called back from the darkness, as he
went to his car, "Don't forget, Miss Alice; let him take his own
time. We always want him, but we want him to get good and well
first. Good-night, good-night, young lady!"

When she closed the door her mother came from the farther end of
the "living-room," where there was no light; and Alice turned to
her.