Then anxiously, swiftly in reply:
"But you will, you old silly, you will!"
"Yes, of course, perhaps I will."
"Good-bye!"
"Oh, come back, my dear. Just once more! How lovely your hair smells...."
Can you imagine how often the most cheerful visitor crumples up when the weary eyes from the bed cannot see beyond the closed door?
* * *
Who is Dr. William Marsden?
How many Londoners know? He was the man who seventy-one years ago founded this hospital, and behind it lies a story as tragic as any in its wards. When going home late one night Dr. Marsden, who was then a young medical student, found a poor girl in a dying condition on a doorstep near Holborn. He took her to a hospital, where she was refused admission because she bore no letter of introduction from a subscriber. The next day she died. The young medical student resolved that if he succeeded in life he would found a free hospital for which there would be no qualification for admission but poverty and suffering.
He became famous, he loved, he married. Then his own wife was stricken with cancer, and nothing could be done to check the disease. Out of her death and the death of the unknown woman sprang this splendid work that shines like a good deed over London.