Max's vagrant mind wandered away from the service to the picture of his mother over his brother's littered desk, to the Street, to K., to the girl who had refused to marry him because she did not trust him, to Carlotta last of all. He turned a little and ran his eyes along the line of nurses.
Ah, there she was. As if she were conscious of his scrutiny, she lifted her head and glanced toward him. Swift color flooded her face.
The nurses sang:—
“O holy Child of Bethlehem!
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in,
Be born in us to-day.”
The wheel-chairs and convalescents quavered the familiar words. Dr. Ed's heavy throat shook with earnestness.
The Head, sitting a little apart with her hands folded in her lap and weary with the suffering of the world, closed her eyes and listened.
The Christmas morning had brought Sidney half a dozen gifts. K. sent her a silver thermometer case with her monogram, Christine a toilet mirror. But the gift of gifts, over which Sidney's eyes had glowed, was a great box of roses marked in Dr. Max's copper-plate writing, “From a neighbor.”
Tucked in the soft folds of her kerchief was one of the roses that afternoon.
Services over, the nurses filed out. Max was waiting for Sidney in the corridor.
“Merry Christmas!” he said, and held out his hand.