It was certainly an ungracious way of putting it.  And her eyes, while not exactly hostile, were ungracious, too.  They would make anyone with a spark of pride want to go away at once.  The professor told himself this.  Besides, his only possible reason for wishing to stay had been some unformed idea of being helpful to the girl herself—­ungrateful minx!

“If there is anything really wrong—­” the cold incredulity of her tone was the last straw.

“Nothing wrong at all!” said Professor Spence.  He arose briskly.  Alas!  He had forgotten his sciatic nerve.  He had forgotten, too, the crampiness of its temper since that glacial bath, and, most completely of all, had he forgotten the fate of the man-who-didn’t-take-care-of-himself.  Therefore it was with something of surprise that he found himself crumpled up upon the floor.  Only when he tried to rise again and felt the sweat upon his forehead did he remember the doctor’s story. . . .  Spence swore under his breath and attempted to pull himself up by the table.

“Wait a moment!”

The cold voice held authority—­the authority he had come to respect in hospital—­and he waited, setting his teeth.  Next moment he set them still harder, for Li Ho and the girl picked him up without ceremony and laid him, whitefaced, upon the sprawling sofa.

“Why didn’t you say you had sciatica?” asked Miss Farr, belligerently.

It seemed unnecessary to answer.

“I know it is sciatica,” she went on, “because I’ve seen it before.  And if you had no more sense than to bathe in that pool you deserve all you’ve got.”

“It looked all right.”  “Oh—­looked!  It’s melted ice—­simply.”

“So I realized, afterwards.”

“You seem to do most things afterwards. caused it in the first place, cold?”

“The sciatica?  No—­an injury.”

There was a slight pause.

“Was it—­in the war?” The new note in her voice did not escape Spence.  He lied promptly—­too promptly.  Desire Farr was an observant young person, quite capable of drawing conclusions.

“I’m not going to be sympathetic,” she said.  “That,” with sudden illumination, “is probably what you ran away from.  But you’d better be truthfull Was it a bullet?”

“Shrapnel.”

“And the treatment?”

“Rest, and the tablets in my bag.”

“Right—­I’ll get them.”

It was quite like old hospital times.  The sofa was hard and the pillows knobby.  But he had lain upon worse.  Li Ho was not more unhandy than many an orderly.  And the tablets, quickly and neatly administered by Miss Farr, brought something of relief.

Not until she saw the strain within his eyes relax did his self-appointed nurse pass sentence.

“You certainly can’t move until you are better,” she said.  “You’ll have to stay.  It can’t be helped but—­father will have a fit.”

“A fit?” murmured Spence.  Privately he thought that a fit might do the old gentleman good.