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XIV A WOMAN WITH A MISSION
 Within a few hours after O'Reilly's return to New York he telephoned to Felipe Alvarado, explaining briefly1 the disastrous2 failure of his Cuban trip.  
"I feared as much," the doctor told him. "You were lucky to escape with your life."
 
"Well, I'm going back."
 
"Of course; but have you made any plans?"
 
"Not yet. I dare say I'll have to join some filibustering3 outfit5. Won't you intercede6 for me with the Junta7? They're constantly sending parties."
 
"Um-m! not quite so often as that." Alvarado was silent for a moment; then he said: "Dine with me to-night and we'll talk it over. I'm eager for news of my brothers and—there is some one I wish you to meet. She is interested in our cause."
 
"'She'? A woman?"
 
"Yes, and an unusual woman. She has contributed liberally to our cause.
I would like you to meet her."
"Very well; but I've only one suit of clothes, and it looks as if I'd slept in it."
 
"Oh, bother the clothes!" laughed the physician. "I've given most of mine to my destitute8 countrymen. Don't expect too much to eat, either; every extra dollar, you know, goes the same way as my extra trousers. It will be a sort of patriotic9 'poverty party.' Come at seven, please."
 
"Dining out, eh? Lucky devil!" said Leslie Branch when he had learned of his companion's invitation. "And to meet a philanthropic old lady! Gee10! Maybe she'll offer to adopt you. Who knows?"
 
"I wish you'd offer to lend me a clean shirt."
 
"I'll do it," readily agreed the other. "I'll stake you to my last one. But keep it clean! Have a care for the cuffs—a little inadvertency with the soup may ruin my prospects11 for a job. You understand, don't you, that our next meal after this one may depend upon this shirt's prosperous appearance?" Branch dove into his bag and emerged with a stiffly laundered12 shirt done up in a Cuban newspaper. He unwrapped the garment and gazed fondly upon it, murmuring, "'Tis a pretty thing, is it not?" His exertions13 had brought on a violent coughing-spell, which left him weak and gasping14; but when he had regained15 his breath he went on in the same key: "Again I solemnly warn you that this spotless bosom16 is our bulwark17 against poverty. One stain may cut down my space rates; editors are an infernally fastidious lot. Fortunately they want facts about the war in Cuba, and I'm full of 'em: I've fought in the trenches18 and heard the song of grape and canister—"
 
"Grape-fruit and canned goods, you mean," O'Reilly grinned.
 
"Well, I shall write with both in mind. The hope of one will stir memories of the other. And who is there to dispute me? At least I know what a battle should be like, and I shall thrill my readers with imaginary combats."
 
O'Reilly eyed the speaker with appreciation19. On the way north he had learned to know Leslie Branch and to like him, for he had discovered that the man possessed20 a rare and pleasing peculiarity21 of disposition22. Ordinarily Branch was bitter, irritable23, pessimistic; but when his luck was worst and his fortunes lowest he brightened up. It seemed that he reacted naturally, automatically, against misfortune. Certainly his and O'Reilly's plight24 upon leaving Cuba had been sufficiently25 unpleasant, for they were almost penniless, and the invalid26, moreover, knew that he was facing a probably fatal climate; nevertheless, once they were at sea, he had ceased his grumbling27, and had surprised his traveling-companion by assuming a genuinely cheerful mien28. Even yet O'Reilly was not over his amazement29; he could not make up his mind whether the man was animated30 by desperate courage or merely by hopeless resignation. But whatever the truth, the effect of this typical perversity31 had been most agreeable. And when Leslie cheerfully volunteered to share the proceeds of his newspaper work during their stay in New York, thus enabling his friend to seize the first chance of returning to Cuba, Johnnie's affection for him was cemented. But Branch's very cheerfulness worried him; it seemed to betoken33 that the fellow was sicker than he would confess.
 
That evening O'Reilly anticipated his dinner engagement by a few moments in order to have a word alone with Alvarado.
 
"I've seen Enriquez," he told the doctor, "but he won't promise to send me through. He says the Junta is besieged34 by fellows who want to fight for Cuba—and of course I don't. When I appealed in Rosa's name he told me, truthfully enough, I dare say, that there are thousands of Cuban women as badly in need of succor35 as she. He says this is no time for private considerations."
 
"Quite so!" the doctor agreed. "We hear frightful36 stories about this new concentration policy. I—can't believe them."
 
"Oh, I guess they are true; it is the more reason why I must get back at once," O'Reilly said, earnestly.
 
"This lady who is coming here to-night has influence with Enriquez. You remember I told you that she has contributed liberally. She might help you."
 
"I'll implore37 her to put in a word for me. Who is she?"
 
"Well, she's my pet nurse—"
 
"A nurse!" O'Reilly's eyes opened wide. "A nurse, with MONEY! I didn't know there was such a thing."
 
"Neither did I. They're rarer even than rich doctors," Alvarado acknowledged. "But, you see, nursing is merely Miss Evans's avocation38. She's one of the few wealthy women I know who have real ideals, and live up to them."
 
"Oh, she has a 'mission'!" Johnnie's interest in Doctor Alvarado's other guest suddenly fell away, and his tone indicated as much. As the doctor was about to reply the ringing of the door-bell summoned him away.
 
O'Reilly had met women with ideals, with purposes, with avocations39, and his opinion of them was low. Women who had "missions" were always tiresome40, he had discovered. This one, it appeared, was unusual only in that she had adopted a particularly exacting41 form of charitable work. Nursing, even as a rich woman's diversion, must be anything but agreeable. O'Reilly pictured this Evans person in his mind—a large, plain, elderly creature, obsessed42 with impractical43 ideas of uplifting the masses! She would undoubtedly44 bore him stiff with stories of her work: she would reproach him with neglect of his duties to the suffering. Johnnie was too poor to be charitable and too deeply engrossed45 at the moment with his own troubles to care anything whatever about the "masses."
 
And she was a "miss." That meant that she wore thick glasses and probably kept cats.
 
A ringing laugh from the cramped46 hallway interrupted these reflections; then a moment later Doctor Alvarado was introducing O'Reilly to a young woman so completely out of the picture, so utterly47 the opposite of his preconceived notions, that he was momentarily at a loss. Johnnie found himself looking into a pair of frank gray eyes, and felt his hand seized by a firm, almost masculine grasp. Miss Evans, according to his first dazzling impression, was about the most fetching creature he had ever seen and about the last person by whom any young man could be bored. If she kept cats they must be pedigreed Persian cats, and well worth keeping, Johnnie decided48. The girl—and she was a girl—had brought into the room an electric vitality
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