"Well, I'm free from that cause."
"But perhaps you've been begetting one!"
"If I have, it will be posthumous, poor little devil."
"If you are determined to look on the black side of this trouble, you'll die and no mistake," declared Renny, emphatically. "Buck up! Be a man! I'm going to take you home. You'll get good care—the best care"
"Who will take care of me?"
"A nurse, I suppose."
Eden answered, hoarsely vehement: "Like hell she will! I tell you, I hate women! I won't have a nurse about me. I loathe them—starchy, flat-footed, hard-eyed—I'll not go home if you make me have a nurse! I'll die first!"
Ernest, his face puckered by anxiety, came into the sick-room. Finch, drawn by morbid curiosity, slunk after him.
Ernest said, reproachfully: "This will never do. The doctor says he must be kept quiet. I don't think you realize how ill he is, Renny." He poured something into a glass and brought it to Eden.
Renny regarded the proceeding with intense irritation and concern. He remarked: "I realize that he's making this affair as difficult as possible."
Ernest, looking down his nose, smoothed Eden's pillow.
"Perhaps you expect Uncle Ernie to nurse you," observed Renny, sarcastically.
Finch guffawed.
Renny wheeled on him. "What" he began. "What"
"Let the lad be," said Ernest. "Finch, my boy, take the hot-water bottle and fill it."
Eden did not want the hot-water bottle, but he pretended that he did, since the need of it made him appear rather more ill-used. Finch, with Renny's eye on him, slunk out with the bottle.
"I'll die before I'll have a nurse," Eden persisted, in a weak voice, after a silence broken only by the running of a tap.
