“Marian—that’s my G.F.—she’s crazy wild about him. And he’s crazy about her, to hear her tell it. But I said to her this noon—she called me up on the phone—I said to her, ‘If he’s so crazy about you, why don’t he propose? He’s got plenty of money and no strings tied to him, and as far as I can see there’s no reason why he shouldn’t marry you if he wants you as bad as you say he does.’ So she said maybe he was going to ask her tonight. I told her, ‘Don’t be silly! Would he drag me along if he was going to ask you?’
“That about him having plenty of money, though, that’s a joke. He told her he had and she believes him. I haven’t met him yet, but he looks in his picture like he’s lucky if he’s getting twenty-five dollars a week. She thinks he must be rich because he’s in Wall Street. I told her, I said, ‘That being in Wall Street don’t mean nothing. What does he do there? is the question. You know they have to have janitors in those buildings just the same like anywhere else.’ But she thinks he’s God or somebody.
“She keeps asking me if I don’t think he’s the best looking thing I ever saw. I tell her yes, sure, but between you and I, I don’t believe anybody’d ever mistake him for Richard Barthelmess.
“Oh, say! I saw him the other day, coming out of the Algonquin! He’s the best looking thing! Even better looking than on the screen. Roy Stewart.”
“What about Roy Stewart?” asked the man in bed.
“Oh, he’s the fella I was telling you about,” said Miss Lyons. “He’s my G.F.’s B.F.”
“Maybe I’m a D.F. not to know, but would you tell me what a B.F. and G.F. are?”
“Well, you are dumb, aren’t you!” said Miss Lyons. “A G.F., that’s a girlfriend, and a B.F. is a boyfriend. I thought everybody knew that.
“I’m going out now and find Miss Halsey and tell her to be nice to you. But maybe I better not.”
“Why not?” asked the man in bed.
“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of something funny that happened last time I was on a case in this hospital. It was the day the man had been operated on and he was the best looking somebody you ever saw. So when I went off duty I told Miss Halsey to be nice to him, like I was going to tell her about you. And when I came back in the morning he was dead. Isn’t that funny?”
“Very!”
“Well,” said Miss Lyons, “did you have a good night? You look a lot better, anyway. How’d you like Miss Halsey? Did you notice her ankles? She’s got pretty near the smallest ankles I ever saw. Cute. I remember one day Tyler—that’s one of the interns—he said if he could just see our ankles, mine and Miss Halsey’s, he wouldn’t know which was which. Of course we don’t look anything alike other ways. She’s pretty close to thirty and—well, nobody’d ever take her for Julia Hoyt. Helen.”
“Who’s Helen?” asked the man in bed.
“Helen Halsey. Helen; that’s her first name. She was engaged to a man in Boston. He was going to Tufts College. He was going to be a doctor. But he died. She still carries his picture with her. I tell her she’s silly to mope about a man that’s been dead four years. And besides a girl’s a fool to marry a doctor. They’ve got too many alibis.
“When I marry somebody, he’s got to be a somebody that has regular office hours like he’s in Wall Street or somewhere. Then when he don’t come home, he’ll have to think up something better than being ‘on a case.’ I used to use that on my sister when we were living together. When I happened to be out late, I’d tell her I was on a case. She never knew the difference. Poor sis! She married a terrible oil can! But she didn’t have the looks to get a real somebody. I’m making this for her. It’s a bridge table cover for her birthday. She’ll be twenty-nine. Don’t that seem old?”
“Maybe to you; not to me,” said the man in bed.
“You’re about forty, aren’t you?” said Miss Lyons.
“Just about.”
“And how old would you say I am?”
“Twenty-three.”
“I’m twenty-five,” said Miss Lyons. “Twenty-five and forty. That’s fifteen years’ difference. But I know a married couple that the husband is forty-five and she’s only twenty-four, and they get along fine.”
“I’m married myself,” said the man in bed.
“You would be!” said Miss Lyons. “The last four cases I’ve been on was all married men. But at that, I’d rather have any kind of a man than a woman. I hate women! I mean sick ones. They treat a nurse like a dog, especially a pretty nurse. What’s that you’re reading?”
“Vanity Fair,” replied the man in bed.
“Vanity Fair. I thought that was a magazine.”
“Well, there’s a magazine and a book. This is the book.”
“Is it about a girl?”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t read it yet. I’ve been busy making this thing for my sister’s birthday. She’ll be twenty-nine. It’s a bridge table cover. When you get that old, about all there is left is bridge or crossword puzzles. Are you a puzzle fan? I did them religiously for a while, but I got sick of them. They put in such crazy words. Like one day they had a word with only three letters and it said ‘A e‑longated fish’ and the first letter had to be an e. And only three letters. That couldn’t be right. So I said if they put things wrong like that, what’s the use? Life’s too short. And we only live once. When you’re
