and says, in a voice that rises as fast as the sound a mouse makes racing up the treble of the piano keys:  ’Ump! whew!  Didn’t I tell you so?  The minute my back was turned, of course you made ducks and drakes of all your promises.  Show me a “Flying Jenney,” that the tip end of any idiot’s little finger can spin around, and I’ll christen it Edward McTwaddle Singleton!’ Seems funny to you, doctor?  Just wait till you are married, and your Susan shuts the door and interviews you, picking a whole flock of crows, till you wonder if it isn’t raining black feathers.  When I am taken to taw about this nursing business, I shall lose no time in laying the blame on you.”

“I will assure Mrs. Singleton that you endeavored to dissuade me; and that you faithfully kept your promise to shield me from danger.”

“Which she will not believe, because she knows that I have the power to lock you up indefinitely.  Besides, if you live to explain matters, there will be no necessity; but suppose you do not?  You are running into the jaws of an awful danger, and if—­”

His frank, pleasant countenance clouded, he gnawed his mustache, and the question ended in a long sigh.  After a moment, a low, sweet voice completed the sentence: 

“If I should die, your tender-hearted wife is so truly and faithfully my friend, that she could not regret to hear I have entered into my rest.”

There was a brief silence, during which the physician crossed the floor, opened a glass door and surveyed the stock of drugs.  When he came back, and took up the pestle, he spoke with solemn emphasis: 

“This is the most malignant type of an always dangerous disease that I have ever encountered; and constant exposure to it, without the careful, persistent use of tonic and disinfectant precautions, would be tantamount to walking unvaccinated into a pest-house, where people were dying of confluent small-pox.  I have no desire to frighten, but it is proper that I should warn you; and insist upon the duty of watching your own health as closely as the symptoms of the victims you are desirous of nursing.  Will you follow the regimen I shall prescribe for yourself?”

“Implicitly.”

The warden finished filling the capsules, rose and looked at his watch.

“As far as the chances go, it is ‘heads I win, tails you lose’; and sorry enough I am to see you come down and dare the pestilence; but since you are, I might as well say what I was asked to tell you last night.  For your sake I kept silent; now since you persist, I wash my hands of all responsibility for the consequences.  You have heard the history of the woman Iva Le Bougeois, better known in the ‘walls’ as the ‘Bloody Duchess’.  Two days ago the scourge struck her down; she is very ill, the worst symptoms have appeared, and she is almost frantic with terror.  Last night, at 12 o’clock, I was going the rounds of the sick wards, and found her wringing her hands,