Please tell me what day it is!" "What day it is?
Well, to-day is Sunday." "Sunday! Yes--but what is the date of the month ?" She laughed softly, patting his hand.
"Oh, never mind! What does it matter ?" "It does matter,"-- he protested, with a touch of petulance--"I know it is July, but what time of July ?" She laughed again.
"It's not July," she said.
"Not July!" "No.

Nor August!" He raised himself on his pillow and stared at her in questioning amazement.
"Not July?
Not August?
Then---- ?" She took his hand between her own kind warm palms, stroking it soothingly up and down.
"It's not July, and it's not August!" she repeated, nodding at him as though he were a worried and fractious child--"It's the second week in September.

There!" His eyes turned from right to left in utter bewilderment.

"But how----" he murmured---- Then he suddenly caught her hands in the one she was holding.
"You mean to say that I have been ill all those weeks--a burden upon you ?" "You've been ill all those weeks--yes!" she answered "But you haven't been a burden.

Don't you think it! You've--you've been a pleasure!" And her blue eyes filled with soft tears, which she quickly mastered and sent back to the tender source from which they sprang; "You have, really!" He let go her hand and sank back on his pillows with a smothered groan.
"A pleasure!" he muttered--"I!" And his fuzzy eyebrows met in almost a frown as he again looked at her with one of the keen glances which those who knew him in business had learned to dread.