"What?" scowled the visitor.
The tone was puzzled rather tan harsh, yet Elsie shrank back in sudden abashment.
"Polly told us a story yesterday," explained Miss Lucy, the pink deepening on her delicate cheeks, "and it made the children want some cherry pudding for dinner. It is not rich," she added apologetically.
The elder nurse responded only with a courteous "Oh!" and then remarked, "What I came down to say is this: I shall send you three cases from my ward at half-past two o'clock this afternoon."
"All right," was the cordial answer. "We shall be glad to welcome them to our little family."
"High Price is awful solemn to-day," whispered Maggie O'Donnell to Ethel Jones, as the door shut.
"High Price?" repeated Ethel, in a perplexed voice.
"Sh!" breathed the other. "She's 'High Price,' and Miss Lucy's 'Low Price,' 'cause she's so high and mighty and tall and everything, and Miss Lucy's kind o' short and little and so darling, and they ain't any relation either. I'm glad they ain't," she added decidedly. "I would n't have Miss Lucy related to her for anything!"
"Oh, no!" returned Ethel, comprehendingly, as she scraped her plate for a last morsel of pudding.
The three "cases," which appeared in the convalescent ward promptly at the hour named, proved to be two girls and a boy,— Brida MacCarthy, Isabel Smith, and Moses Cohn. Polly did her share in routing the evident fears of the small strangers, their wide, anxious eye showing that they dreaded what might lie ahead of them in these unknown quarters.