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Show 280 "IPn witb tbc E>ancc" ®It> "Rose ant> Sllller anything and everything that human power can do, day or night, until we come to the last ditch." "Good for you. I 'II 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, uhanded 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 'II have a try for it," he said, then continued, kindly: "no salt water upstairs, you know." · "I know," she sighed, wiping her eyes. uThen 'on with the dance- let joy be unt confined.'" 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 J ack, or Doctor Glller tbe llar 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 'II 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-l mean--excuse me," stam~ mered Allison. The young man laughed joyously. "You can search me," he answered, with a shrug. "The gods must have been in a sardonic mood about the time I arrived to gladden this sorrowful sphere. I 've never used more of it than I could help, and everybody called me ']em' until I went to college, the initials making a shorter and more agreeable name. But before I'd been there a week, I was ' Jemima' or' Aunt Jemima' to the whole class. So I changed it myself, though it took a thrashing to make two or three of 'em remember that my name was Jack." "How did you happen to come here?" queried Allison, without much interest. "The man who was down here on the fifth sent me. He told me about you and suggested that my existence might be less wearing if I had something to do. He just passed along his 'ttbe .:Elot on tbr: •fikutcbcon1 |
