"Well, nurse," said the great man, "I must go. I am due in the operating theatre. I am sure that I am only representing the thought of the whole hospital staff when I say how deeply we all regret that you are leaving us. You have—ahem!—endeared yourself to every one, and your work has been splendid. You have been a pattern to your colleagues in every way. I hope that in the new sphere of life you have chosen you will be happy and prosperous."
Sir Abraham was not an orator in ordinary life, though he had been known to rise to real eloquence when lecturing upon some of the obscurer forms of appendicitis. But the short, jerky sentences came from his heart as he shook the hand of the beautiful girl who, like himself, was a soldier in the noble army of those who fight disease and death.
They all crowded round Mary. The nurses kissed her, the young doctors wrung her by the hand and tried to express something of their feelings.
Men and women, they all loved and valued her, and every one knew that when she went out through the great doors for the last time they would all suffer a loss which could never be replaced.
It was over at last. No longer in her nurse's dress, but clothed in the ordinary tailor-made coat and skirt that young ladies wear in London during the mornings, Mary got into the waiting hansom cab. The driver shook the reins, the horse lurched into a trot, there was a vision of waving hands and kindly faces, and then the long, grimy façade of the hospital slid past the window and was lost to view.
Mary Lys was no longer a hospital nurse.
As she drove westward—for she was on her way to her aunt's house in Berkeley Square, where she was about to make her home for a time—she reviewed her past life, with its many memories, bitter and sweet. It had been a hard and difficult life—a life of unceasing work among gloomy and often terrible surroundings. And moreover, she was not a girl who was insensible to the beauty and softer sides of life. Culture, luxury, and repose were all hers did she but care to speak one word to Lady Kirwan. She was constantly implored to leave the work she had set herself to do.
She had always refused, and now, as she looked back on the past years, she knew that she had been right, that her character was now fixed and immovable, that the long effort and self-control of the past had given her a steadfastness and strength such as are the portion and attributes of few women.
And as the cab moved slowly up the Strand, Mary Lys thanked God for this. Humbly and thankfully she realized that she was now a better instrument than before, a more finely tempered sword with which to fight the battle of Christ.
For though Mary was to live beneath the roof of Sir Augustus Kirwan, she was not going to live the social life—the life of pleasure and excitement as her cousin Marjorie did. Mary had left the hospital for one definite purpose—that she might join the army of Joseph, and give her whole time to the great work which the evangelist was inaugurating in London.