But meantime I’ll land a job for you the first of next week. Now don’t you fret another worry. Good night.”

He took her slim little hand in his briefly shyly, and then left with a wave of the hand to the nurse and a smile like sunshine.

The girl lay still looking after him, a wavering smile about her own lips, a questioning relief in her eyes.

“He…sounds very…sure!” she said doubtfully and gave a tiny sigh. “It would be wonderful…if…he could.”

“He will!”said the nurse breezily. “He’s wonderful! He does things. He’s that way. They say he looked like a young giant when he brought you in, and he wouldn’t let the attendants touch you. He just carried you himself in his arms in the elevator, and he wouldn’t let them put you in the ward.”

Margaret McLaren lay still for some minutes looking off into space, trying to picture herself being brought into a hospital room that way, her pale cheeks growing rosy, her eyes dreamy. Then she sighed again.

“I wonder if it’s right to let him help me that way,” she said in a troubled voice. “He’s just a stranger, and I never can repay him.”

“I don’t see that you’ve anything to do about it,” said the nurse crisply. “He’d do it anyway, whether you let him or not. Besides, it will do him good to help somebody. It always does men good to help others. He’ll probably get a kick out of hunting you a job, and for heaven’s sake, why should you quarrel with help when it comes your way? There’s little enough of it these days. And you never can tell about paying back—you might and then some!”

“But he’s a stranger,” urged the girl. “I don’t know what my grandmother would think of my letting him help me this way.”

“Well, we’re all strangers more or less, no matter how well we know each other, and for heaven’s sake, what’s your grandmother got to do with it? She isn’t here to be bothered, is she? And where would you have been if it hadn’t been for this young man? Lying dead in the morgue as likely as not, and nobody knowing where to look for your relatives! By the way, it’s high time you let me have the address of that grandmother, if anything should happen to you. It isn’t right for us not to know. Now, there’s a pencil and paper. You write down the address, and then you turn over and go to sleep. You’ve a half hour before your tray comes up, and you need every minute to rest in. If you’re going to work next week, you’ve got to conserve your energy. Now be a good girl and go right to sleep.”

Chapter 4

On the way back to the hotel, Greg passed a florist’s shop and gave an order for roses to be sent to the hospital. He spent some time deciding between pink and yellow, and at last bought Ward rosebuds, dozens of them, with the deep apricot glow of sunset in their folding and a rare wonderful fragrance. They would be sent up that night and be there to brighten Sunday morning when she awoke. He did not put his name with them. It was enough that she should just have them. He thought uneasily that perhaps she would not want roses from a stranger. She had tried distinctly to make him feel that he was a stranger. Well, if she objected, he would just tell her that he liked to do it for his mother’s sake, that his mother would have enjoyed sending them to her if she were alive.

He thought a great deal about the girl that evening, remembered the sweep of her eyelashes, the proud little way she had of lifting her chin, the pleasant tones of her voice. It made a warm glow about his heart to have somebody to think about.