“Oh, let me alone!” they muttered querulously.

The eyes opened.  The Unspeakable Perk gazed up into the faces above him, but saw only one, a face whose tender concern softened it to a loveliness greater even than when he had last seen it.  He tried to rise, but the hands that pressed him back were firm and quick.

“Lie still!” bade their owner.

A thin film of color mounted to his cheeks.

“I—­I—­beg your pardon,” he stammered.  “I—­I—­d-didn’t know—­”

“Don’t be a goose!” she adjured him.  “It’s only me.”

“Yes, that’s the trouble.”  He closed his eyes again, and began to murmur.

“What does he say?” asked Mr. Brewster, lowering his head and almost falling over backward as his astonished ears were greeted by the slowly intoned rhythm:—­

    “Scarab, tarantula, doodle-bug, flea.”

“Delirious!” exclaimed the magnate.  “Clean off his head!  How does one find a doctor in this town?”

“No need, dad,” his daughter reassured him.  “It’s just a—­a sort of game.”

“Game!  Did you hear what he said?”

“Well, a kind of password.  It’s all right, Dad.  It is, really.”

Still undecided, Mr. Brewster stared at the injured man.

“I don’t know—­” he began, when the eyes opened again.

“Feeling better?” inquired Polly briskly.

“Yes.  The charm works perfectly.”

“Anything I can do, or get, for you, my boy?” inquired Mr. Brewster, stepping forward.

“What’s in the ice-box?” asked the other anxiously.

“Oh!” cried the girl in distress.  “He’s starving!  When did you eat last?”

“I can’t exactly remember.  It was about five this morning, I think.  A banana, and, as I recall it, a small one.”

“Dad!” cried the girl, but that prompt and efficient gentleman was already halfway to the cook, dragging Sherwen along as interpreter.

“He’ll get whatever there is in the shortest known time,” the girl assured her patient.  “Trust dad.  Now, you lie back and let me fix up a fresh bandage.”

“You’d have made a great trained nurse,” he murmured, as she adjusted the clean strips that Sherwen had sent in.  “Don’t pin my ear down.  It’s got to help hold my goggles on.”

“The dear funny goggles!” Picking them up, she patted them with dainty fingers, before setting them aside.  He watched her uneasily, much in the manner of a dog whose bone has been taken away.

“Do you mind giving them back?” he said.

“But you’re not going to wear them here,” she protested.

“I’ve got so used to them,” he explained apologetically, “that I don’t feel really dressed without them.”

She handed them back and he adjusted them to the bandages.  “For the present, rest is prescribed you know,” said she.

“Oh, no!” he declared.  “As soon as I’ve had something to eat, I’ll go.  There are a hundred things to be done.  Where are my gloves?”