"How is my charge?" he asked.
A ripple of tenderness crossed the nurse's lips as she answered:
"He has been looking for you, and he is always better on the days that you come."
She passed along the hall and entered a large room into which the daylight fell like a bath of sunshine. In the centre of the room there was a tiny table around which a dozen children were sitting in small white chairs. Despite the bandaged heads and the weak limbs, there was no sign of suffering. It was all cheerfulness and sunshine, as if the transition from a tenement-house room to space and air had unfolded the shrunken little bodies into bloom.
In a cot near a window, where the sunlight flashed across the cover, a boy of three or four years lay with a strap beneath his small pink wrapper, fastening him to a board of wood. At the head of the bed was printed the name, and below:
| "Pott's disease of the spine. |
| Received, October, 1896; discharged ..." |
As he saw the priest he stretched out his pallid little hands with a gurgle of welcome, merriment overflowing his eyes.
Father Algarcife took the hands in his and sat down beside the cot. Since entering the room he seemed to have caught something of the infant stoicism surrounding him, for his face had lost its strained pallor and the lines about his mouth had softened.
"So it is a good day," he said. "The little man is better. He has been on the roof-garden."
The child laughed.