“Yes—and one is sorry for them. But the risk to the children is very great—only they won’t believe it, and many of them think we are hard-hearted monsters. We always question the mothers as to what they are bringing the children, and watch them carefully; but even so, they manage to smuggle things past us. We had a dear little boy here in the winter—a typhoid patient, just pulling round after a very bad time. Of course he was on strict liquid diet, and equally, of course, he was very hungry.”
“Poor kid!” said Jim, sympathetically.
“That’s what his mother thought. So she smuggled him in two large jam tarts in her muff, and bent over him so as to hide him while he ate them.”
“And did they hurt him?”
“They would have killed him. Luckily Nurse became suspicious, and caught him, as she said, ‘on the first bite.’ She rescued every crumb from his mouth, and nearly choked him in the process. But if she had not we couldn’t have saved him.”
“And what did the mother say?”
“The mother? Oh, she said that Nurse was ’an in’uman brute,’ and nearly fell on her, tooth and nail. You can’t teach them. Many of them are terribly poor—but they will spend a few pence on some cheap and dreadful sweetmeat, or a cake that looks—and often is—absolutely poisonous, and expect to be allowed to watch a sick baby eat it. Visiting day has many anxieties!”
Something called the busy Matron away as they reached the first ward, and they hesitated in the doorway. It was a long, bright room, cheery with sunlight and gay with flowers and plants, while the red bed jackets made bright notes of colour against the white quilts. Many of the boys were sitting up, working or playing at boards that fitted across their cots to serve as tables. Others were lying quietly, and very often could be seen the structure beneath the bedclothes that speaks mutely of hip disease. There were framed placards over many cots, stating whose gift they had been; perhaps raised by the efforts of children, or given by some sad mother in memory of a little child. Looking down the long rows of bright faces it was hard to realize that they were all sick boys—that Pain lived in the ward night and day.
In one cot a little lad was crying softly—a tired cry, as if afraid of disturbing others. The nurse bending over him straightened up, patted his shoulder, said, “Be a good boy, now, Tommy!” and came to greet the visitors.
“You mustn’t mind the little chap who cries,” she told them. “His leg is hurting, poor man. He won’t speak to any one.”