The first message that astonished gentleman got was that a red-haired person at the hospital was very ill, having run into a wire fence and bruised a nose, and that he was to bring out at once from town two doctors, six nurses, a cook and a furnace man!

After a time, however, as Jane grew calmer, he got it straightened out, and said a number of things over the telephone anent the deserting staff that are quite forbidden by the rules both of the club and of the telephone company.  He gave Jane full instructions about sending to the village and having somebody come up and stay with her, and about taking a hot footbath and going to bed between blankets, and when Jane replied meekly to everything “Yes, father,” and “All right, father,” he was so stunned by her mildness that he was certain she must be really ill.

Not that Jane had any idea of doing all these things.  She hung up the telephone and gathered all the candles from all the candlesticks on the lower floor, and started back for the hospital.  The moon had come up and she had no more trouble with fencing, but she was desperately tired.  She climbed the drive slowly, coming to frequent pauses.  The hospital, long and low and sleeping, lay before her, and in one upper window there was a small yellow light.

Jane climbed the steps and sat down on the top one.  She felt very tired and sad and dejected, and she sat down on the upper step to think of how useless she was, and how much a man must know to be a doctor, and that perhaps she would take up nursing in earnest and amount to something, and——­

It was about three o’clock in the morning when the red-haired person, coming down belatedly to close the front doors, saw a shapeless heap on the porch surrounded by a radius of white-wax candles, and going up shoved at it with his foot.  Whereat the heap moved slightly and muttered “Lemme shleep.”

The red-haired person said “Good Heavens!” and bending down held a lighted match to the sleeper’s face and stared, petrified.  Jane opened her eyes, sat up and put her hand over her mutilated nose with one gesture.

“You!” said the red-haired person.  And then mercifully the match went out.

“Don’t light another,” said Jane.  “I’m an alarming sight.  Would—­would you mind feeling if my nose is broken?”

He didn’t move to examine it.  He just kept on kneeling and staring.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

“Over to telephone,” said Jane, and yawned.  “They’re bringing everybody in automobiles—­doctors, nurses, furnace man—­oh, dear me, I hope I mentioned a cook!”

“Do you mean to say,” said the red-haired person wonderingly, “that you went by yourself across the fields and telephoned to get me out of this mess?”

“Not at all,” Jane corrected him coolly.  “I’m in the mess myself.”

“You’ll be ill again.”

“I never was ill,” said Jane.  “I was here for a mean disposition.”