"Both right," Jocelyn Thew acquiesced. "What should you say to that
young woman leaving her hospital and her house in Riverside Drive,
breaking all her engagements at less than twenty-four hours' notice,
to take a sick Englishman whom no one knows anything about, back to
Liverpool on the _City of Boston_ to-morrow?"

"The story's good enough," a ferret-faced little man at his elbow
acknowledged, "but is it true?"

Jocelyn Thew regarded his questioner with an air of pained surprise.

"It's Gospel," he assured them all, "but you don't need to take my
word. You go right along up and enquire at the Beverley house
to-night, and you'll find that she is packing. Made up her mind just
an hour ago. I'm about the only one in the know."

"Who's the man, anyway?" one of the little group asked.

"Nothing doing," Jocelyn Thew replied mysteriously. "You've got to
find that out for yourself, boys. All I can tell you is that he's an
Englishman, and she has known him for a long time--kind of love stunt,
I imagine. She wasn't having any, but now he's at death's door she
seems to have relented. Anyway, she is breaking every engagement she's
got, giving up her chairmanship of the War Hospitals Committee, and
she isn't going to leave him while he's alive. There's no other nurse
going, so it'll be a night and day job for her."

"What's the matter with the chap, anyway?" another questioner
demanded.