“Four. The youngest’s not a year old yet, an’ he’s a reg’lar handful.”
“But you can’t look after them!” Jean protested.
The child stared.
“Well, I done it nearly all me life,” she said. “Mother, she goes out washin’, an’ I run the house—y’see, I got a doctor’s c’tificate that I needn’t go to school, ’cause of me hip, so that leaves me plenty of time. An’ then me jolly old hip must go an’ get worse on me! An’ now Mum’s sick.” Her lip quivered. “I don’t see how on earth they’re goin’ to get on if I don’t go home!” she said anxiously. “Do you think you could say somethin’ to Matron? An’ then, perhaps, she could put in a word for me with Doctor!”
Norah promised; it was hard to deny the pleading of the great brown eyes. But when, later on, she found her opportunity, the Matron shook her head.
“Poor little soul!” she said, sadly. “She does not know that she will never go out.”
“Not go out?” Norah stared.
“No; she has been here five months, and it is quite hopeless. And it is better so—she could never be strong.” The Matron patted Norah’s shoulder, looking gently at her aghast face. “You don’t know how many there are for whose sake we are glad when the end comes,” she said.
Out on the broad balconies many children were lying—there seemed no corner in all the great building that was not full of patients. One verandah had babies’ cradles only—such weary, old-looking babies that Norah could scarcely bear to look at them; it was so altogether extraordinary and terrible to her, that a baby could possibly look as did these mites from the slums. That was the saddest part of all the hospital.
Then there were medical wards, into some of which they could not go; they left their parcels with the nurses, since David Linton had planned that every child in the hospital should have a gift from his children. Some of these small patients were too ill to be disturbed. There were one or two beds round which a screen was drawn significantly, and the children near the screens were very quiet. But even where sickness or pain was hardest, there was but little complaining, and very seldom did a child cry. The children of the poor soon learn to suffer in silence.