"Bless me, this is news indeed!" said Strause. "I don't know whether I am glad or sorry."
He paused, and a peculiar expression flitted across his face. He was wondering how he could use Katherine's somewhat startling information for his own benefit. It seemed to him that he saw daylight.
"On the whole, I am thoroughly pleased," he said. "And you want to see Miss Hepworth—Sister Mollie, as we call her? That is a very easy matter. There is no infectious illness at the hospital. If you like to come with me now, I will walk across to it with you and introduce you to her."
Katherine jumped up with alacrity.
"I shall be greatly obliged to you," she said.
She and Major Strause went down the long, irregular street, and entered the hastily put up military hospital. There was at that early stage of the siege a special ward for the enteric cases; surgical cases were attended to in a ward by themselves. The stores and ammunition, and the different comforts for the sick, had arrived, and the nurses were flitting noiselessly about, attending to one case after another.
Katherine entered the long ward, where about a dozen poor fellows were lying in different stages of enteric fever. A girl in a nurse's uniform, carrying a basin of gruel in her hand, was coming down the ward towards her. The girl had Kitty's face, and Katherine recognized her at once. Kitty's face, but with a difference. All the beauty was there, and none of the weakness. The full, dark eyes, the curving sweet lips, the delicate contour of the finely-marked brows, the chiselled and delicate features, were all present. But on Mollie's brow and in Mollie's eyes might have been seen that perfect and absolute self-abnegation which always brings out the noblest qualities of a true woman. She was deeply interested in her cases, and scarcely saw Katherine as she stood in the entrance of the long ward.
Major Strause went softly down the ward, and said a word to the nurse. Katherine saw her give a slight start of surprise; then she handed to the major the basin of gruel which she was carrying. He carried it across the ward, and seating himself on a low stool, began to feed, spoonful by spoonful, a young subaltern who, alas, would never live to see his twentieth year! Mollie came eagerly forward to where Katherine was standing.
"You are Mollie Hepworth; how do you do?" said Katherine Hunt.
"And you are a brave Englishwoman who has come over here to share our ill fortunes and our good," replied Mollie.