“Won’t anybody else do?”

“Do you need her badly somewhere else?”

“If there were ten of her I could use them all!” declared her husband emphatically.

“Nevertheless—­”

Red Pepper Burns got up.  He summoned a nurse waiting just outside the door.  “Please send Miss Arden here for a minute,” he requested.  Then he turned back.  “Are you satisfied with your power?” he asked his wife.

She nodded.  “Quite.  But I think you feel, as I do, that this is one of the ten places where she will be better than another.”

“She’s a wonder, all right.”

The patient in the bed presently was bidden to look at her new nurse, one who was to take care of her much of the time.  She lifted her heavy eyes unwillingly, then she drew another deep breath of relief.  “I would rather have you,” she murmured to the serene brow, the kind eyes, the gently smiling lips of the girl who stood beside her.

“There’s a tribute,” laughed Burns softly.  “They all feel like that when they look at you, Selina.  And what Mrs. Burns wants she usually gets.  You may special this case to-night, if you are ready to begin night duty again.”

“I am quite ready,” said Miss Arden.

Burns turned to the bed again.  “You are in the best hands we have to give you,” he said.  “You are to trust everything to those hands.  Good-night.  I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good-night, dear,” whispered Mrs. Burns, bending for an instant over the bed.

“Oh you angels!” murmured the girl as they left her, her eyes following them.

* * * * *

It was ten days later, in the middle of a wonderful night in early May, that Miss Arden, beginning to be sure that the case which had interested her so much was going to give her a hard time before it should be through, listened to words which roused in her deeper wonder than she had yet felt for the most unusual patient she had had in a long time.  Although there was as yet nothing that could be called real delirium, a tendency to talk in a light-headed sort of way was becoming noticeable.  Sitting by the window, the one light in the room deeply shaded, she heard the voice suddenly say: 

“This evens things up a little, doesn’t it?  I know a little more about it now—­you must realize that, if you are keeping track of me—­and I know you are—­you would—­even from another world.  Things aren’t fair—­they aren’t.  That you should have to suffer all you did, to bring you to that pass—­while I—­But I know a good deal about it now—­really I do.  And I’m going to know more.  I didn’t sell a single book to-day.  You had lots of such days, didn’t you?  Poor—­pale—­tired—­heartsick—­heartbroken girl!”

A little mirthless laugh sounded from the bed.  “I wonder how many people ever let a person who is selling something at the door get into the house.  And if they let her in, do they ever, ever ask her to sit down?  The places where I’ve stood, telling them about the book, while they were telling me they didn’t want it—­stood and stood—­and stood—­with great easy chairs in sight!  Oh, that chair in my doctor’s office—­it was the first chair I’d sat in that whole morning.  I went to sleep in it, I think.”