"Yus, a cripple. But don't ask me no more. The Woice gives me strength, and I won't niver, niver tell."
"What does Big Ben say? I don't understand."
"No," said Sue; "and p'r'aps ye're not wanted to understand. It's for me and for him, poor darling, that Woice is a real comfort."
The nurse left her little charge a few minutes afterwards. But before she went off duty she spoke to the night nurse, and confessed that she was anxious about the child, who ought to be recovering, and certainly would but for this great weight of trouble on her mind.
All these things, which seemed in themselves unimportant, bore directly on immediate events; for when Connie and Harris arrived at St. Thomas's Hospital and made inquiries with regard to a little, freckled girl, with an honest face and sturdy figure, the hall porter went to communicate with one of the nurses, and the nurse he communicated with turned out to be the night nurse in the very ward where Sue was lying—so suffering, so ill and sorely tried.
Now, the nurse, instead of sending word that this was not the hour for visiting patients, took the trouble to go downstairs herself and to interview Connie and her father. Connie gave a faithful description of Sue, and then the nurse admitted that there was a little girl in the hospital who was now in the children's surgical ward. She had been brought in a day or two ago, having a broken leg, owing to a street accident. She was a very patient, good child, but there was something strange about her—nothing would induce her to tell her name.
"Then what do you call her?" asked Harris.
He was still full of inward tremors, for at that moment he was thinking that of all the sweet sights on earth, that sight would be little Sue's plain face.
"Have yer no name for the pore child?" he repeated.
"Yes," said the nurse. "She calls herself Cinderella."