So we all settled to a discussion of shapes and styles and suitable words. The nurses warmed to the work, the ward sister came in to give her views, and for the first time for weeks I found myself smiling. Finally, it was unanimously decided that the most appropriate and truthful description would be these simple words—

“SHE WAS PLAIN BUT OCCASIONALLY PLEASANT.”

But the time came when I was beyond even discussing tombstones; when I could not bear a sound in the room and even quiet footsteps jarred me. Then it was that I found out more especially what the spirit of Mildmay stands for. It was no mere perfunctory service that was rendered the invalid. Doctors, matron, nurses said nothing of the extra hours of work they put in on my account; of the watching and the tending when they were really supposed to be off duty. It seemed wonderful that I, who had looked forward to the inevitable with a terrible dread of being lonely and among strangers, should actually find myself, when the time came, surrounded by friendly faces, and cared for by people who had grown very dear to me.

And fancy a hospital where they went to the trouble of bandaging up the door-handles to prevent noisy bangs; where they laid down matting to deaden the sounds in the corridor; where they fixed peremptory notices to the doors, enjoining all and sundry to close them quietly; where even the ward-maid constituted herself dragoness-in-chief, for the time being, watching and waiting, and then pouncing on any unthinking person who might let a latch slip through her fingers, or a house-porter who might clatter a coal-scuttle.

Yet this—and a great deal more—is what they did at Mildmay, just because one patient was going through a bad time.

Thanks to all the care I received, I was at last able to leave the hospital. Of course I was glad to go out into the big world again—who wouldn’t be, after lying all that time with no other “view” visible from where I lay but three chimney-pots? I was glad to think I was going to be able to walk again, and take up my work once more. But I felt genuine regret at having to say good-bye to the people I had really grown to love during my stay with them.

I shall never forget the morning that I was taken away by a couple of nurses to the seaside. The others came, in ones and twos, to say good-bye. And in the midst of it, the great surgeon walked in—just to see what the patient was like before she started.

“Now confess,” he said, “a hospital isn’t such a bad place after all, is it?”