"Oh no," said Anne; "I was lonely and sad, and glad to come."
"It doos kinder rouse one up to see a lot of men hit in all sorts of ways, legs and arms and everything flying round," remarked the driver, as if approving Anne's selection of remedies for loneliness.
They reached Number Two at dawn, and found the wounded in rows upon the floor of the barn dignified by the name of hospital. There had been no attempt to classify them after the few beds were filled. One poor torn fragment of humanity breathed his last as the nurses entered, another an hour later. Mary Crane set herself to work with ready skill; Anne, after going outside two or three times to let her tears flow unseen over the sorrowful sights, was able to assist in taking care of two kinds of cases—those who were the least hurt and those who were beyond hope, the slightly wounded and the dying. One man, upon whose face was the gray shadow of death, asked her in a whisper to write a letter for him. She found paper and pen, and sat down beside the bed to receive his farewell message to his wife and children. "And tell little Jim he must grow up and be a comfort to his mother," he murmured; and then turning his quiet gaze slowly upon the nurse: "His mother is only twenty-two years old now, miss. I expect she'll feel bad, Mary will, when she hears." Poor young wife! The simple country phraseology covered as much sorrow as the finest language of the schools. During the night the man died.
The new nurses remained at Number Two six days. Anne's work consisted principally in relieving Mary Crane at dawn, and keeping the watch through the early morning hours while she slept; for the head surgeon and Mary would not allow her to watch at night. The surgeon had two assistants; with one of these silent old men (they were both gray-haired) she kept watch while the sun rose slowly over the hill-tops, while the birds twittered, and the yellow butterflies came dancing through the open doors and windows, over the heads of the poor human sleepers. But Number Two had greater ease now. The hopelessly wounded were all at rest, their sufferings in this life over. Those who were left, in time would see health again.
On the seventh day a note came to the surgeon in charge from the temporary hospital at Peterson's Mill, asking for medicines. "If you can possibly spare us one or two nurses for a few days, pray do so. In all my experience I have never been so hard pushed as now," wrote the other surgeon. "The men here are all down with the fever, and I and my assistant are almost crazed with incessant night-work. If we could be relieved for one night even, it would be God's charity."
The surgeon of Number Two read this note aloud to Anne as they stood by a table eating their hasty breakfast. "It is like the note you sent to us at Number One," she said.
"Oh no; that was different, I never send and take away other people's nurses," said Dr. Janes, laughingly.
"I should like to go," she said, after a moment.
"You should like to go? I thought you were so much interested here."
"So I am; but after what I have seen, I am haunted by the thought that there may be worse suffering beyond. That is the reason I came here. But the men here are more comfortable now, and those who were suffering hopelessly have been relieved forever from earthly pain. If we are not needed, some of us ought to go."