while the doctor bared her arm for the needle.

“Sleepy, sleepy,” she twittered in mimicry of drowsy birds. “I am ready, doctor. Stretch the skin tight, first. You know I don’t like to be hurt. — Hold me tight, Dick.”

Robinson, receiving the eye permission from Dick, easily and quickly thrust the needle through the stretched skin, with steady hand sank the piston home, and with the ball of the finger soothingly rubbed the morphine into circulation.

“Sleepy, sleepy, boo’ful sleepy,” she murmured drowsily, after a time.

Semi-consciously she half-turned on her side, curved her free arm on the pillow and nestled her head on it, and drew her body up in nestling curves in the way Dick knew she loved to sleep.