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Show THE IRONY OF IT. (A Hospital Episode.) "Shake up my pillows, please, dear." It was as natural to Ronald to use the caressing caress-ing epithet as for some men to omit the "please." He never gave a thought to what the little "dear" might mean to the young girl in the neat gingham frock and apron who had been in attendance at-tendance upon him since he first entered the hospital. His brown eyes lighted up when she came near him. He liked hv to smooth the sheets and do all the little offices that make a sick room seem less like a prison. Sometimes he caught her smooth, soft, yet firm hands in his, and pressed them gently. She was so kind, so tender to him. It was her duty to do what she could to make his aching bones forget their pains. But, somehow, some-how, when Ronald spoke to her Anne forgot she was only a trained nurse. He had such a loving way with him. Women had petted him since he was an infant. They all loved hiir How could Anne escape his charm? As for Ronald, to him she was only his nurse. Yet he could no more help making love to her than he could change the fact that he loved but one and that one Marlon. Marlon did not know he was ill. He would not, let them send her word, for that would spoil her pleasure. She, beautiful, happy creature, was enjoying her first season in society. She wrote to Ronald, and he on his bed of pain listened to Anne as she read the gay accounts of teas, balls and dinners In which "I" figured largely, with hints of the conquests "I" was making by the score. Ronald was supposed by his fiance to be surveying railroads in Arizona and looking, perhaps, for a stray mine that might bring the wedding day nearer the present. To Anne it all seemed terribly selfish. She looked at Ronald, pale on his pillows, and wondered won-dered how any woman could go on and amuse herself far from him. "Why doesn't she know, and come?" she asked herself. Then she hugged closer her joy in her task. She let her heart luxuriate in the crumbs that fell her way, tender words unconsciously dropped, delicious moments when Ronad's hand touched hers, or his brown eyes smiled into her gray ones. She wore herself into a shadow over her charge, denying herself sleep that he might miss no moment of her care. And one day into the sick room floated a radiant radi-ant vision. It was not necessary to tell Anne who it was. "Marion!" a weak voice called from the pillows. pil-lows. The brown head was raised and two thin arms were outstretched. "Ronald, why didn't I know before?" The great bunch of roses she carried fell . upon the floor as the radiant vision leaned over i I de brown nead. Anne turned her face away. The end had come, she knew, for her. "You'll get well, darling, now that I have come," cooed Marlon. "That I will, sweetheart," returned Ronald, his own face reflecting her radiance. "It's all very well to say doctors can cure one," went on Marion, "but they can't, you know. A little love a great big lot of love is what does the business." Ronald remembered something then. "Marion, I want you to meet my little nurse," he said, "she's the best little nurse in all the world." But when Marion turned to the window, there was no figure in a neat gingham frock and white apron there. Anne had gone. San Francisco Town Talk. |