Quin

								

custard with a spoon. The rest of the days were lost in abstract time,
during which Quin had his hair cut and his face shaved, and did
bead-work.
Until now he had sturdily refused to be inveigled into occupational
therapy. Those guys that were done for could learn to knit, he said, and
to make silly little mats, and weave things on a loom. If he couldn't do
a man's work he'd be darned if he was going to do a woman's. But now all
was changed. He announced his intention of making the classiest bead
chain that had ever been achieved in 2 C. He insisted upon the instructor
getting him the most expensive beads in the market, regardless of size or
color.
Now, for Quin, with his big hands and lack of dexterity, to have worked
with beads under the most favorable conditions would have been difficult,
but to master the art lying flat on his back was a tour de force. He
pricked his fingers and broke his thread; he upset the beads on the
floor, on the bed, in his tray; he took out and put in with infinite
patience, "each bead a thought, each thought a prayer."
"Don't you think you had better give it up?" asked the instructor, in
despair, after the fourth lesson.
"You don't know me," said Quin, setting his jaw. "You been trying to get
me into this for two weeks--now you've got to see me through."
It did not take long for the other patients to discover Quin's state of
mind.
"How about your heart disease, Graham?" they inquired daily; "think it's
going to be chronic?"
But Quin had little time for them. The distinction he had enjoyed as the
champion poker-player in 2 C. began to wane as his popularity with the
new ward visitor increased.
"I like your nerve!--keeping her up there at your bed all the time,"
complained Michaelis.
"She's an old friend of mine," Quin threw off nonchalantly.
"Aw, what you tryin' to put over on us?" scoffed Mike. "Where'd you ever
git to know a girl like that?"
"Well, I know her all right," said Quin.
The little mystery about Miss Bartlett's first name had been a fruitful
topic of conversation between a couple whose topics were necessarily
limited. She had teased Quin to tell her how he knew, and also how he
knew she wanted to go on the stage; and Quin had teased back; and at last
it had resolved itself into a pretty contest of wits.
This served to keep her beside him often as long as four minutes. Then he
would gain an additional two minutes by showing her what progress he had
made with his chain, and consulting her preference for an American flag
or a Red Cross worked in the medallion.
When every other means of detaining her had been exhausted, he sometimes
resorted to strategy. Constitutionally he was opposed to duplicity; he
was built on certain square lines that disqualified him for many a
comfortable round hole in life. But under the stress of present
circumstances he persuaded himself that the end justified the means.
Ignoring the fact that he was as devoid of relations as a tree is of