"Oh, I won't, I won't!" said Effie, with a sob; "but I felt lonely, very lonely, and it was so very kind of you to come to see me."
"Of course I have come to see you—I am only too delighted to do anything in my power for you. I would have rushed down to share your cup of tea on your arrival, but a bad case was just being brought into the ward, and I could not leave. Now, I must go to bed myself, or I shan't be fit for work to-morrow. Good-night, Effie. I have arranged that you are to spend every second Sunday at home."
"Oh, how good you are—how thankful I am!" exclaimed Effie.
Dorothy was leaving the room, when she turned back.
"I forgot to tell you that you are very lucky to be under Sister Kate," she said. "There is not a nurse in the whole hospital who trains as she does, and her probationers always get the best certificates at the end of the two years of training."
"She looks so severe and hard," said Effie.
"She is a little severe, and some people may call her hard, but she has a tender heart under all that strict, somewhat cold manner, and then she is so just. My dear, when you know more of hospital life you will be thankful that you are with a just and patient Sister. Sister Kate is both. She will soon recognize you, Effie, for what you are. Now good-night, my love."
Dorothy went away, and soon afterward Effie fell asleep.
The next morning she was awakened by a bell, at what seemed to her something like the middle of the night. She had to dress herself quickly, and then go into the ward and begin her duties.
She found, somewhat to her surprise, that she had to begin her nurse's life as a sort of maid-of-all-work; she had to scrub floors, to clean grates, to polish handles—it seemed to her that she never had a moment to herself from morning till night. Her feet felt very sore, her back ached. Once or twice she felt so dreadfully fagged that she wondered if she could keep up. But through it all, growing greater and greater as the days went on, there came a sense of full satisfaction, of something accomplished, something done, of the feeling that she was being trained thoroughly and efficiently, so that at the end of her time of probation she might be able to say, "There's one thing which I can do well."