“Say,” he began, by way of graceful preliminary, “you look to me as though you had sense.”

“Thank you,” she replied, demurely.

“Sense,” he resumed, “is lamentably scarce, especially the variety misnamed common—­or even horse.  I’m no mental healer, nor anything of that sort, you know, but it’s reasonable to suppose that if the mind can control the body, after a fashion, when the body is well, it’s entitled to some show when the body isn’t well, don’t you think so?”

Rose assented, though she did not quite grasp what he said.  His all pervading breeziness affected her much as it had Allison.

“Now,” he continued, “I’m not unprofessional enough to knock anybody, but I gather that there’s been a procession of undertakers down here making that poor chap upstairs think there’s no chance.  I’m not saying that there is, but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t trot along until we have to stop.  It isn’t necessary to amputate just yet, and until it is necessary, there’s nothing to hinder us from working like the devil to save him from it, is there?”

“Surely not.”

“All right.  Are you in on it?”

“I’m ‘in,’” replied Rose, slowly, “on anything and everything that human power can do, day or night, until we come to the last ditch.”

“Good for you.  I’ll appoint you first lieutenant.  I guess that nurse is all right, though she doesn’t seem to be unduly optimistic.”

“She’s had nothing to make her so.  Everything has been discouraging so far.”

“Plenty of discouragement in the world,” he observed, “handed out free of charge, without paying people to bring it into the house when you’re peevish.”

“Very true,” she answered, then her eyes filled.  “Oh,” she breathed, with white lips, “if you can—­if you only can—­”

“We’ll have a try for it,” he said, then continued, kindly:  “no salt water upstairs, you know.”

“I know,” she sighed, wiping her eyes.

“Then ‘on with the dance—­let joy be unconfined.’”

Rose obediently went back to the piano.  The arrival of the trunk and the composition of a hopeful telegram to Colonel Kent occupied the resourceful visitor for ten or fifteen minutes.  Then he went back to his patient, who had already begun to miss him.

“You forgot to tell me your name,” Allison suggested.

“Sure enough.  Call me Jack, or Doctor Jack, when I’m not here and have to be called.”

“But, as you said yourself a few minutes ago, I can’t begin that way.  What’s the rest of it?”

“If you’ll listen,” responded the young man, solemnly, “I will unfold before your eyes the one blot upon the ’scutcheon of my promising career.  My full name is Jonathan Ebenezer Middlekauffer.”

“What—­how—­I mean—­excuse me,” stammered Allison.