“That does not sound like God,” said David quietly.

“Well, He gave me the bugs, didn’t He?”

“Oh, the bugs,—­you’ve got them, have you?  You don’t look like it.  I didn’t know it was your health.  I thought maybe it was just your disposition.”

David smiled winningly as he spoke, and the smile took the sting from the words.

“The bugs are worse on the disposition than they are on the lungs, aren’t they?”

“Well, it depends.  Carol says they haven’t hit mine yet.”  He lifted his head with boyish pride.  “She ought to know.  So I don’t argue with her.  I am willing to take her word for it.”

Nancy smiled a little, a transforming smile that swept the discontent from her face and made her nearly beautiful.  But it only lasted a moment.

“Oh, go on and smile.  It did me good.  You can’t imagine how much better I felt directly.”

“There’s nothing to make me smile,” cried Nancy hotly.

“You may smile at me,” cried Carol gaily, as she ran in.  “How do you do?  You are Miss Tucker, aren’t you?  They were telling me about you at the office.”

“Yes, I am Miss Tucker.  Are you Mrs. Duke?  You look too young for a minister’s wife.”

“Yes, I am Mrs. Duke, and I am not a bit too young.”

“I asked them if I should call a doctor, and they said that could wait a while.  First of all, they said, I must come to Room Six and meet the Dukes.”

Carol looked puzzled.  “They didn’t tell me that.  What did they want us to do to you?”

“I don’t know.  I just said, ’Well, I guess I’d better get a doctor to come and kill me off,’ and they said, ’You go over to Number Six and meet the Dukes.’”

“They said lovely things about you,” Carol told her, smiling.  “And they say you will be well in a few months,—­that you haven’t T. B.’s at all yet, just premonitions.”

The good news brought no answering light to the girl’s face.

“They are nurses.  You can’t believe a word they say.  It is their business to build up false hopes.”

“When any one tells me David is worse, I think, ’That is a wicked story’; but when any one says, ‘He is better,’ I am ready to fall on my knees and salute them as messengers from Heaven,” said Carol.

One of the sudden dark clouds passed quickly overhead, obscuring the glare of the sunshine, darkening the yellow sand.

“I hate this country,” said Nancy Tucker.  “I hate that yellow hot sand, and the yellow hot sun, and the lights and shadows on the mountains.  I hate the mountains most of all.  They look so abominably cock-sure, so crowy, standing off there and glaring down on us as if they were laughing at our silly little fight for health.”

Carol was speechless, but David spoke up quickly.

“That is strange; Carol and I think it is a beautiful country,—­the broad stretch of the mesa, the blue cloud on the mountains, the shadow in the canyons, and most of all, the sunshine on the slopes.  We think the fight against T. B.’s is like walking through the dark shade in the canyons, and then suddenly stepping out on to the sunny slopes.”