very, very, own little Mummie!"

God knows what had taken me upstairs, except the awful fascination of such wanderings, the mental necessity of either hearing them or knowing that they had ceased. On the stairs I felt so thankful they had ceased; it was in the darkened play-room, now a magazine of hospital appliances, kettles, bottles, and the oxygen apparatus; it was here I heard the joyous ravings of his loving little heart--here, on the threshold between his own two rooms, that I even saw him with his thin arms locked round the neck of the young nurse who had taken over the night duty.

She heard me. She came to the door and stood in silhouette against the cheerful firelight of the inner room. Its glow just warmed one side of her white cap and plain apparel, then glanced off her high white forehead and made a tear twinkle underneath.

"He thinks I'm his mother," she whispered--"and I'm letting him!"

I went out and pulled myself together on the landing, before sneaking back into the study without waking Coplestone.

In the morning I was dozing behind my counter without compunction, for the vigil had been an absolutely sleepless one for me, when the glass door opened like a clap of thunder, and in comes Delavoye rubbing his hands.

"The doctor's grinning all round his head this morning!" he crowed. "You may take it from me that there's a lot of life in our young dog yet."

"What's his temperature?"

"Down to a hundred and a bit. One thing at a time. They've scotched that infernal delirium, at all events."

"Since when?"

"Some time in the night. He's not talking any rot this morning."

"But he was fairly raving after midnight. I went up and heard him myself."

Uvo broke into exulting smiles.

"Ah! Gilly," he said, "but now we've got an angel abroad in the house. You can almost hear the beating of her wings!"

"Is that your own, Uvo?"

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