“The man pulled through, and began steadily to recover, but the wife was a wee slip of a girl, and her strength—­what there was of it—­ebbed day by day.  As he got stronger he would call out more and more cheerfully to her through the open door, and ask her how she was getting on, and she would struggle to call back laughing answers.  It had been a mistake to put them next to each other, and I blamed myself for having done so, but it was too late to change then.  All we could do was to beg her not to exhaust herself, and to let us, when he called out, tell him she was asleep.  But the thought of not answering him or calling to him made her so wretched that it seemed safer to let her have her way.

“Her one anxiety was that he should not know how weak she was.  ’It will worry him so,’ she would say; ’he is such an old fidget over me.  And I am getting stronger, slowly; ain’t I, nurse?’

“One morning he called out to her, as usual, asking her how she was, and she answered, though she had to wait for a few seconds to gather strength to do so.  He seemed to detect the effort, for he called back anxiously, ‘Are you sure you’re all right, dear?’

“‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘getting on famously.  Why?’

“‘I thought your voice sounded a little weak, dear,’ he answered; ’don’t call out if it tries you.’

“Then for the first time she began to worry about herself—­not for her own sake, but because of him.

“‘Do you think I am getting weaker, nurse?’ she asked me, fixing her great eyes on me with a frightened look.

“‘You’re making yourself weak by calling out,’ I answered, a little sharply.  ‘I shall have to keep that door shut.’

“’Oh, don’t tell him’—­that was all her thought—­’don’t let him know it.  Tell him I’m strong, won’t you, nurse?  It will kill him if he thinks I’m not getting well.’

“I was glad when her sister came up, and I could get out of the room, for you’re not much good at nursing when you feel, as I felt then, as though you had swallowed a tablespoon and it was sticking in your throat.

“Later on, when I went in to him, he drew me to the bedside, and whispered me to tell him truly how she was.  If you are telling a lie at all, you may just as well make it a good one, so I told him she was really wonderfully well, only a little exhausted after the illness, as was natural, and that I expected to have her up before him.

“Poor lad! that lie did him more good than a week’s doctoring and nursing; and next morning he called out more cheerily than ever to her, and offered to bet her a new bonnet against a new hat that he would race her, and be up first.

“She laughed back quite merrily (I was in his room at the time).  ’All right,’ she said, ’you’ll lose.  I shall be well first, and I shall come and visit you.’

“Her laugh was so bright, and her voice sounded so much stronger, that I really began to think she had taken a turn for the better, so that when on going in to her I found her pillow wet with tears, I could not understand it.