"What? Why, I could get up now----"
"With those shingles plastered to your shoulder?" asked the girl, smiling again, but somewhat roguishly.
"Oh--well--have those boards actually got to stay on?"
"Yes, indeed."
"How long?"
"Till the doctor removes them, Pratt. Now, be a good boy."
"I"ll never be able to get out of bed," grumbled the patient, "if he keeps me here much longer, I"ll be bedridden."
"Nonsense," said Frances, with a very superior air. "You haven"t been here two days yet."
"And when is the doctor coming again?" went on Pratt.
"He said he"d come within the week," replied the girl, demurely.
"Good-night, nurse!" groaned Pratt. "A whole week? Why, I"ll die in that time--positively."
"You only think so," said Frances, coolly.
"You don"t know how hard it is to lie here with nothing to do."
"You don"t appreciate your good fortune, I am afraid," returned the girl, more gravely. "You might have been much more seriously hurt----"
"You don"t suppose I care about being hurt, do you?" he cried, with some excitement. "I"d go through it a dozen times to the same end, Frances----"
"Now, stop!" she said, commandingly, and raising an admonitory finger.
"If you show any excitement I will go out of the room and leave Ming----"
"Don"t!" groaned Pratt.
"I shall certainly leave him in charge of you. You won"t talk to him."
"No. If he doesn"t sit silent like a yellow graven image, he scatters "l"s" all about the room until I want to get out of bed and sweep "em up," declared Pratt.
The ranchman"s daughter smiled at him, but shook her head. "Now! no more talking. I"ll sit here and promise not to scatter any of the alphabet broadcast; but you must keep still."
"That"s mighty hard," muttered the patient. "Sit over by the window.
There! right in the sun. I like to see your hair when the sun burnishes it."
Frances promptly removed her seat to the shady side of the room.
"Oh, please!" begged Pratt. "I"m sick, you know. You really ought to humor me."
"And you really ought not to jolly me!" laughed the range girl. "I think you are a tease, Pratt."
"Honest! I mean it."
She looked at him with a roguish smile. "What did you say to Miss Latrop about her hair? Isn"t it a lovely blond?"
"Oh! I never looked at it twice. Mola.s.ses color," declared Pratt. "I don"t like such light hair."
"Now, be still. Mrs. Edwards sent over word they are coming to see you to-morrow. If you are feverish I shan"t let them in."
"My goodness!" gasped Pratt. "Not all of them coming, I hope?"
"Mrs. Edwards and Miss Latrop, anyway," said Frances, seriously. "Now keep still."
Pratt digested this for a while; then he held up one arm and waved it.
"Well? What is it?" asked the stern nurse.
"Please, teacher!"
"Well?"
"May I say one thing?"
"Just one. Then silence for an hour."
"If that girl from Boston comes I"m going to have a fever--understand? I don"t want her up here. Now, that"s all there is about it."
"Hush, small boy! You don"t know what is good for you. You must leave it to the doctor and me," said Frances, but she kept her head turned from the bed so that Pratt would not see her eyes.
By and by Pratt waved his hand again like a pupil in school and even snapped his fingers to attract her attention.
"Please, teacher!" he begged when she looked up from the pad on her knee over which her pencil had been traveling so rapidly.
"I"m nurse, not teacher," Frances said, firmly.
"Nurse, then. Is that the plan for the pageant you are writing?"
"A part of it," she admitted. "Some ideas that came to me the time I went to Amarillo."
"With the make-believe treasure chest?"
"Yes."
"Read it to me, will you, Miss Nurse?" he asked.
"If you will keep still. I never did see such a chatterbox!" exclaimed Frances, in vexation.
"I"ll be just as still as still!" he promised. "Maybe it will put me to sleep."
"Mercy! I hope it isn"t as dull as all that," she said, and began to read the pages she had written.