"How do you feel, this morning, Ruth?"
"Oh, Miss Alden! Alick is dead. I have not thought of myself," was the quick reply.
"Little dear, so he is! He wanted to be an angel, and Jesus answered his prayer right away. If we were all as ready as he was, 'twould be a happy thing for us. I hope you love your Saviour, Ruth!"
Her eyes fell, as she answered softly, "I'm afraid not!"
"Well, don't delay a minute then, to seek him for your friend. I've been in the wards long enough to know, if I never knew it before, that religion is the only thing that can carry us safely through the dark valley; and it makes the poor things so happy, too. Death is no king of terrors to those who love Jesus. He is their dearest friend, come to call them home to their mansion above the skies."
Ruth lay pondering these words; though her eyes followed the good nurse as she went from one couch to another, smoothing the clothes over one restless sufferer, or giving medicine to another.
Then the dumb waiters, or dummies, as they were called, came up loaded with the breakfast; when the nurse set the table, to which all who were able to walk soon seated themselves. To those who were strictly confined to their beds the nurses carried food nicely arranged on little waiters.
The meal was scarcely concluded, when a porter appeared at the door, bearing in his arms a child about five years of age, which he conveyed to a large chair turning back like a couch, and then left her in the care of Miss Alden.
"Bad case!" Ruth heard him whisper, "leg burnt to a crisp!"
Here, then, was a new appeal to the sympathy of the patients; and no one can tell what a relief it is to these poor suffering ones to have a child, a loving, helpless child, before their eyes to divert their attention from themselves.