“It is,” said Peter, surprised, wondering.
“Thank Heaven!” murmured he of the freckles piously. “I’ve found you at last! Come along back to the hotel with me and we’ll talk as we go. I’m famishing for breakfast.”
CHAPTER XXVII
A MIRACLE
And here it is necessary to record certain things which led up to this—to Peter—most extraordinary of meetings: things which those who do not believe in the miracles wrought by love and prayer might regard as almost incredible coincidences.
One afternoon, it was in the week between Christmas and the New Year, Father O’Sullivan was in the Westminster Hospital. He had been with a sick man for the last half-hour or so, cheering him on his high-road to recovery. He had only just left him—he was, in fact, in the corridor—when a nursing Sister, a Catholic, came up to him.
“Father,” she said, “there’s a man—a gentleman—who would like to see you; he’s a Catholic and dying. I asked him to let me send for a [Pg 272]priest yesterday, and again to-day, but he refused. A few moments ago, however, I happened to mention your name and say that you were in the hospital. He asked me then to fetch you.”
“Ah!” said Father O’Sullivan, smoothing his chin, as was the way with him—if he had worn a beard he would have been stroking it; “where is he?”
“In here, Father.” And she led the way through a ward, and into a small room that opened out of it.