CHAPTER III.
Towards the end of a busy morning Sister Warwick was cheered by the bright face of her youngest sister, who had come up for a day's shopping, and who appeared in the ward for a few moments.
She went with a smile and something sunny to say to the bedside of the one or two patients she remembered to have seen during her last visit. Mrs. 13 she asked after with special interest, and paused with sudden gravity to look at the lines on the suffering face, just now at rest in sleep.
She knew Mrs. 13's story, and her heart burnt within her as she recalled it. How she longed for those who say that the sweating system of ill-paid and unwholesome work is a thing of the past to stand where she stood and see for themselves!
Presently the warm-hearted girl had other thoughts—still kind ones—in her pretty head. She begged her elder sister to come into her room and see what she had put there.
Oh, such a glorious basket of roses!
Sister Warwick plunged her face among them and sighed her enjoyment, not only of the scent, but because they had come from home, and because a dear mother's hands had helped to cut and pack them there.
"They are not for the ward or the patients this time," said the eager young voice. "Mother and I thought of it together. We want one to be laid on each of the nurses' plates at dinner to-day as a little surprise. Do you think Miss Jameson would say 'Yes' if I took them to the Nurses' Home?"
"Of course she would, dear! Only try! And how I wish you could hear what the nurses will say and the look on their faces when they see a pretty, gay table where there is usually a desert-plain of white china! It is a nice thought!"
"Well, mother and I have come to the conclusion that you working-women want freshening with a flower sometimes as well as the rich folk. We mean to do it again some day. Oh, and there are quite enough to go all round, I hope, and to leave a supply for the Sisters' dinner this evening. We weren't going to leave you out, you poor, tired old thing. You look rather washed out, dear."
There was an anxious question in these last words.
Sister Warwick told her a little about her disturbed night, and got a loving kiss of sympathy. Then the merry girl bustled away, leaving behind her an atmosphere the brighter for her coming.
Who more than hospital nurses appreciate these short-lived breaks in their lives, these little visits from their own people that flash sunshine and warmth into the dark corners?
And the flowers too. What would hospital life be without the flowers? Have we not already seen some of the many happy uses to which they may be put?
The typhoid—No. 10—was a poor flower-girl. She had not failed to notice how the nurses loved the fair blossoms, and with reviving life her warm little heart filled with gratitude for the tenderness and care she had received. She could only think of one vent for her feelings.
"Look here, Sister," she said. "I generally stand at the top o' Cheapside or thereabouts. Do come my way. I'll be looking out for you. And I'll give you such a bowkay!"
Susie, if she was inclined to fret for "mother" and "home," had a plucky little soul with which to greet other woes. Just to-day she was feeling it very perplexing that, in spite of a decidedly hungry appetite, she was knocked off her dinner altogether. She tried not to grumble, but her face was very wistful until Sister came and explained that the doctors wished it, and that in the afternoon she was to "have on a clean night-gown and such a pretty bed-jacket that is waiting in my room, and I shall tie up your hair with this nice piece of blue ribbon. We are going to take you to see the doctors instead of their coming to see you to-day. You know how kind they are, don't you, little maid?"
Susie had nothing but gentleness to remember, and fortunately she did not connect Sister's words with the great cruel lump on her leg that was sapping her little life and giving her those sudden sharp pains that often drew her little lips together with a pathetic "Oh!"
It was thus that Sister Warwick tenderly shielded the child as much as possible from the terrors of anticipating an unknown ordeal, and Susie went smiling in Sister's arms to the operating theatre. She only had one short moment of fear when she found herself laid on that very strange bed, with so many strange faces round her.
Then she went to sleep. She supposed so, for she opened her eyes again in the long, quiet ward, with the bright flowers on the table and Sister beside her, one hand resting on her curls, and the other holding her tiny wrist. Sister was smiling too. Seeing this, Susie guessed there was nothing to be frightened at, though down in her little heart she fancied she should have been afraid of something—she did not know what—if she had waked to find herself alone.
She drank the milk that was given her, and feeling drowsy sighed a "Good night, Sister," turned a very white little face sideways upon the pillow, and slept again—this time a natural satisfactory slumber.
Susie never realised what a blessed thing had happened to her during that confused time. For she was hardly old enough to connect that "going to see the doctors" with the fact that her "poor, poor leg," as she called it, grew rapidly well from that day.
Happy Susie, to pass so calmly through such a crisis in your life! and to lie in your little cot all unconscious of the interest you cause, not only to your doctors and nurses, but to all the elder women in the beds up and down this long room, who were well enough to enter into what went on around them. The flower-girl was one of these, and Mrs. 13 was another.
Patty, being a spoilt little mortal, expressed a wish that she too might "have a pretty hair-tie, and go to see the doctors with Sister." She was quite jealous of all the attention Susie was receiving, and thought herself neglected by contrast.
Sister laughed, and made it all right by saying:
"You shall do better than that, dear. Some day soon we will put you into the mail-cart, wrap you up in a pretty blue shawl, and you shall go under the trees in the gardens."
So Patty had the pleasure of anticipation, too.
(To be concluded.)