work.  He had been in a volunteer regiment, he told me, as an assistant surgeon, but had never gone past the fever camps, as this was his first case of a gunshot wound.  He had made a study of gunshot wounds, and deemed himself fortunate to be in when Mr. Warden called.  Truly, said I to myself, one man’s death is another man’s practice.  But it was best that he was so confident, and I found my faith in him growing as he worked.  The wound was a bad one, he said, and the ball had narrowly missed the heart, but with care the man would come around all right.  The main thing was proper nursing.  The young doctor smiled as he spoke, for standing before him in a solemn row were half the women of Six Stars.  Mrs. Bolum was there with a tumbler of jelly; Mrs. Tip Pulsifer had brought her “paytent gradeated medicent glass,” hoping it would be useful; Mrs. Henry Holmes had no idea what was needed, but just grabbed a hot-water bottle as she ran.  Elmer Spiker’s better half was there to demand her injured boarder at once; he paid for his room at the tavern; it was but right that he should occupy it and that she should care for him.  When she found that she could not have him entirely, she compromised on the promise that she would be allowed to watch over him the whole of the next day.  In spite of the jar of jelly, the doctor chose Mrs. Bolum to help him that night, and when I left them the old woman was sitting in a rocker at the bedside, her eyes watching every movement of the sleeping patient’s drawn face.

[Illustration:  The main thing was proper nursing.]

Outside, the wind was whistling.  The steady heating of an oak branch on the porch roof told me it was blowing hard.  It sounded cold.  Mary stood tiptoe to reach my collar and turn it up.  Then she buttoned me snug around the neck.  It was the first time a woman had ever done that for me.  How good it was!  I absently turned the collar down again and tore my coat open.  Then I smiled.

Again she raised herself tiptoe before me, and with a hand on each shoulder, she stood looking from her eyes into mine.

“You fraud!” she cried.

Then I laughed.  Lord, how I laughed!  Twenty-four years I had lived, and until now I had never known a real joke, one that made the heart beat quicker, and sent the blood singing through the veins; that made the fingers tingle, the ears burn, and brought tears to the eyes.  I don’t suppose that other people would have thought this one so amusing.  The young doctor upstairs might not have feigned a smile, for instance.  That was what made it all the better for me, for it was my own joke and Mary’s, and in all the world I was the only man who could see the fun of it.

“When you turn that collar up again I am going,” said I.

So she sprang away from me, laughing, and quick as I reached out to seize her, she avoided me.

“You know I can’t catch you,” I cried, taunting her, “so I must wait.”