"You are very kind, Miss Armstrong, but I cannot stay. I must return to Bleachers."
"I shall not allow you to go back," she said with decision.
"In a long and comparatively useless life I have never contradicted a lady, but on this occasion I must insist on having my own way."
"I quite understand your reason, Mr. Stranleigh, though it is very uncomplimentary to me. It is simply an instance of man's distrust of a woman when it comes to serious work. Like most men, you would be content to accept me as a nurse, but not as a physician. There are two doctors in Bleachers, and you are anxious to get under the care of one of them. No--please don't trouble to deny it. You are not to blame. You are merely a victim of the universal conceit of man."
"Ah, it is you who are not complimentary now! You must think me a very commonplace individual."
She had thrown the coat over his shoulders, after having washed and dressed the wound. The bullet had been considerate enough to pass right through, making all probing unnecessary. With a safety-pin she attached his shirt sleeve to his shirt front.
"That will do," she said, "until I prepare a regular sling. And now come out to the verandah. No; don't carry the chair. There are several on the platform. Don't try to be polite, and remember I have already ordered you to avoid exertion."
He followed her to the broad piazza, and sat down, drawing a deep breath of admiration. Immediately in front ran a broad, clear stream of water; swift, deep, transparent.
"An ideal trout stream," he said to himself.
A wide vista of rolling green fields stretched away to a range of foothills, overtopped in the far distance by snow mountains.
"By Jove!" he cried. "This is splendid. I have seen nothing like it out of Switzerland."
"Talking of Switzerland," said Miss Armstrong, seating herself opposite him, "have you ever been at Thun?"
"You stopped at the _Thunerhof_, I suppose?"
"I don't remember what it was called, but it was the largest hotel in the place, I believe."
"That would be the _Thunerhof_," she said. "I went to a much more modest inn, the _Falken_, and the stream that runs in front of it reminded me of this, and made me quite lonesome for the ranch. Of course, you had the river opposite you at the _Thunerhof_, but there the river is half a dozen times as wide as the branch that runs past the _Falken_. I used to sit out on the terrace watching that stream, murmuring to its accompaniment 'Home, sweet Home.'"