Mrs. Y. (calling her). “Nurse! what’s the matter with the new man-patient on our floor?”
Nurse (discreetly). “I don’t know, Mrs. Y.”
Mrs. X. (as the nurse vanishes). “She does, but she’s a stiff thing! Anyway, I heard the attendants whispering about him in the corridor before breakfast. Something—I think it’s an organ—is floating about in him.”
All. “Floating? What kind of an organ? Horrors!”
Mrs. X. “I couldn’t understand exactly. You know people always roar if they have nothing particular to say, but if it is interesting they whisper. I distinctly heard the word ‘floating.’ I don’t know whether it’s one of his regular organs, or something he swallowed accidentally.”
Mrs. C. (plaintively). “Doctors are never satisfied. If anything floats they want to get it stationary, and if it’s stationary they want to cut it loose.”
Mrs. G. “Just after my youngest child—”
Mrs. B. “They say Mrs. H. is going to leave to-morrow; she doesn’t like the food or the service.”
Mrs. E. “Goodness, she has all the service there is on our floor! Nobody else gets a chance! She spends her whole silent hour pushing the electric button.”
Mrs. D. “Yes, Miss Oaks declares she ‘lays’ on it. She says that the head nurse told Mrs. H. she must ring less frequently, or the bell would be removed. Miss Oaks says the patients that pay the smallest rates always ring the bells most. It isn’t fair that a thirty-dollar patient should annoy a whole row of eighty-dollar ones and prevent their bells from being answered.”