the most blighting circumstances, those who counted most believed in her and trusted her. They had only waited for time to forget and tongues to stop wagging, and then they had called her back. Perhaps the strangest thing about it was that Sheila did not look like a person who could have had even the smallest, fleeciest of clouds brushing her most distant horizon. In fact, so vital, warm, and glowing was her personality, so radiant her nature, that she seemed instead a permanent dispeller of clouds.

From across the pond Hennessy watched her with adoring eyes as he gave his habitual, final bang to the bread-platter and the hitch to his corduroys preparatory to leaving.[Pg 43] To his way of thinking, there was no nurse enrolled on the books of the old San who could compare with her. In the beginning he had prophesied great things of her to Flanders, the bus-driver. “Ye mind what I’m tellin’ ye,” he had said. “Afore she’s finished her trainin’ she’ll have more lads a-dandtherin’ round her than if she’d been the King of Ireland’s only daughter. Ye can take my word for it, when she leaves here, ’twill be a grand home of her own she’ll be goin’ to an’ no dirty hospital.”

[Pg 43]

That had been three years ago, and Hennessy sighed now over the utter futility of his words. “Sure, who could have been seein’ that one o’ the lads would have turned blackguard? Hennessy knows. Just give the lass time for that hurt to heal, an’ she’ll be winnin’ a home of her own, after all.” This he muttered to himself as he took the path leading toward the rest-house.

Sheila saw him coming, his lips shirred to the closeness of some emotional strain. “Hello, Hennessy! What’s troubling?” she called down the path.

“Faith, it’s Mr. Peter Brooks that’s troublin’. ’Tis a week, now, that ye’ve been[Pg 44] off that case—an’ he’s near cured. Another week now—”

[Pg 44]

“In another week he’ll be going back to his work—and I’ll be very glad.”

Hennessy eyed the girl narrowly. “Will ye, then? Why did ye cure him up so fast for, Miss Leerie? Why didn’t ye give the poor man a chance?”

No one but Hennessy would have had sufficient temerity for such a question, but had any one dared to ask it, upon their heads would have fallen the combined anger and bitterness of Sheila’s tongue. For having had occasion once for bitterness, it was not over-hard to waken it when men served as topics. But at Hennessy she smiled 

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