I resented his tone.

"Why?"

"For after that, remember, I want no sound out of you, not a sound beyond a whisper!"

His wrinkled old face took on an expression of ferocity which rather surprised me. Small as he was, I saw, he might prove about one part capsicum and three-parts puff-adder. And I stared at him with widened eyes as he shook a lean and bony forefinger at me. But I was calmer, inwardly, than when he had first spoken to me in Central Park.

"Then you'd better give me a tip about what you expect me to whisper," I ventured. "And another as to just what you're expecting from me anyway!"

He stared at me, once more in a sort of silent debate with himself.

"There's a trained nurse up-stairs who'll attend to all that," he explained. "A most estimable young woman!"

"You all seem to be that!" I said, sotto voce.

"We all seem to be which?" he barked back at me. And there was fire in his eye.

"What's that trained nurse's name?" I mildly inquired, remembering my part.

"Alicia Ledwidge, I believe," he told me, as he moved toward the door.