she drew forth a long pink bathrobe and a pair of felt slippers.

“There! I guess you can get those on.”

She bustled into the bathroom, turned on the hot water, and heaped big[77] white bath-towels and sweet-scented soap upon him. In a kind of daze of thankfulness he stumbled into the bathroom, and began his bath. He hadn’t had a bath like that in—was it two years? Somehow the hot water held down the nasty little sick thrills, and cut out the chills for the time. It was wonderful to feel clean and warm, and smell the freshness of the towels and soap. He climbed into the big nightgown which also smelled of lavender, and came forth presently with the felt slippers on the front of his feet, and the pink bathrobe trailing around his shoulders. There was a meek, conquered expression on his face; and he crept gratefully into the warm bed according to directions, and snuggled down with that sick, sore thrill of thankfulness that everybody who has ever had grippe knows.

[77]

Miss Marilla bustled up from down-stairs[78] with a second hot-water bag in one hand and a thermometer in the other.

[78]

“I’m going to take your temperature,” she said briskly, and stuck the thermometer into his unresisting mouth. Somehow it was wonderfully sweet to be fussed over this way, almost like having a mother. He hadn’t had such care since he was a little fellow in the hospital at prep school.

“I thought so!” said Miss Marilla, casting a practised eye at the thermometer a moment later. “You’ve got quite a fever; and you’ve got to lie right still, and do as I say, or you’ll have a time of it. I hate to think what would have happened to you if I’d been weak enough to let you go off into the cold without any overcoat to-night.”

“Oh, I’d have walked it off likely,” faintly spoke the old Adam in the sleepy, sick soldier; but he knew as he[79] spoke that he was lying, and he knew Miss Marilla knew it also. He would have laughed if it hadn’t been too much trouble. It was wonderful to be in a bed like this, and be warm, and that ache in his back against the hot-water bag! It almost made his head stop aching.

[79]

In almost no time at all he was asleep. He never realized when Miss Marilla brought a glass, and fed him medicine. He opened his mouth obediently when she told him, and went right on sleeping.

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