“God bless her!” she broke out.  “Girls isn’t generally like that.  Their heads is too full of finery.  God bless her, ’Merican or no ’Merican!  That’s what I say.”

Mount Dunstan’s red-brown eyes looked as if she had pleased him.

“That’s what I say, too,” he answered.  “God bless her!”

There was not a day which passed in which he did not involuntarily say the words to himself again and again.  She had been wrong when she had said in her musings that they were as far apart as if worlds rolled between them.  Something stronger than sight or speech drew them together.  The thread which wove itself through his thoughts grew stronger and stronger.  The first day her gifts arrived and he walked about the ballroom ward directing the placing of hospital cots and hospital aids and comforts, the spirit of her thought and intelligence, the individuality and cleverness of all her methods, brought her so vividly before him that it was almost as if she walked by his side, as if they spoke together, as if she said, “I have tried to think of everything.  I want you to miss nothing.  Have I helped you?  Tell me if there is anything more.”  The thing which moved and stirred him was his knowledge that when he had thought of her she had also been thinking of him, or of what deeply concerned him.  When he had said to himself, tossing on his pillow, “What would she do?” she had been planning in such a way as answered his question.  Each morning, when the day’s supplies arrived, it was as if he had received a message from her.

As the people in the cottages felt the power of his temperament and depended upon him, so, also, did the patients in the ballroom ward.  The feeling had existed from the outset and increased daily.  The doctors and nurses told one another that his passing through the room was like the administering of a tonic.  Patients who were weak and making no effort, were lifted upon the strong wave of his will and carried onward towards the shore of greater courage and strength.

Young Doctor Thwaite met him when he came in one morning, and spoke in a low voice: 

“There is a young man behind the screen there who is very low,” he said.  “He had an internal haemorrhage towards morning, and has lost his pluck.  He has a wife and three children.  We have been doing our best for him with hot-water bottles and stimulants, but he has not the courage to help us.  You have an extraordinary effect on them all, Lord Mount Dunstan.  When they are depressed, they always ask when you are coming in, and this man—­Patton, his name is—­has asked for you several times.  Upon my word, I believe you might set him going again.”

Mount Dunstan walked to the bed, and, going behind the screen, stood looking down at the young fellow lying breathing pantingly.  His eyes were closed as he laboured, and his pinched white nostrils drew themselves in and puffed out at each breath.  A nurse on the other side of the cot had just surrounded him with fresh hot-water bottles.