When she opened her eyes again, the young doctor was bending over her, chafing her hands, and she heard his remorseful voice saying, "My dear Mrs. Campbell, you misunderstood me. The operation was successful. The little one will live."
"Ah, yes, I know," sighed the woman. "But it was such a relief to know the ordeal was ended that I couldn't bear the joy of the news. I am all right now. When can we see our girl?"
Quickly the good news was flashed over the wires to the anxious hearts in Martindale, "Operation successful. Peace will walk again." And great was the rejoicing everywhere.
Only Peace herself seemed undisturbed, taking everything as a matter of course, obeying the nurse's orders, and asking no questions concerning her own welfare, though she asked enough about other people's affairs to make up, and soon became a source of unending amusement to the hospital attendants, who made every excuse imaginable to talk with this dear little, queer little patient in her room.
Peace was in her element. Nothing suited her quite so well as to make new friends, and she was delighted at the interest the busy nurses and doctors displayed in her case. "Why, Miss Wayne," she sighed ecstatically one day when she had been in the hospital for a month, "I know the name of every nurse and doctor in this building, and pretty near all the patients. The only trouble with them is they change so often I really can't get much acquainted before they go home. I'm just wild to get into that wheel-chair which Dr. Dick has promised me as soon as I get strong enough; for then I can go visiting the other sick folks, can't I? Dr. Dick says I can, and I'm crazy to see what they look like. I can't tell very well from what the nurses say about their patients just what they look like. I try to 'magine while I'm lying here all day, but you know how 'tis,—the ones who have the prettiest names are as homely as sin usually; and the pretty ones have the homely names.
"There's the little lady down the hall who keeps sending me jelly and things she can't eat. The head nurse, Miss Gee,—ain't that an awful funny name? I call her Skew Gee, because her first name is Sue. Well, she told me that this lady has been in the hospital four years. Four years! Think of it! And that she never says a cross word to anyone, but when the pain gets bad she sings until it's better. No wonder that man loved her and wanted to marry her even if she will always be an invalid."
"What do you know about love and marriage?" teased the nurse, laying out fresh linen and testing the water in a huge bowl by the bed.
"I know I'd have married her, too, if I'd been in his shoes. She must be a darling. I'm very anxious to see if she is pretty. Miss Gee says she is. She says that typhoid girl is pretty, too. The one who has been here ten weeks now and is still so sick. I don't s'pose they'd let me see her yet. She calls one of her legs Isaiah and the other Jeremiah, 'cause one of 'em doesn't bother her and the other does. Isaiah in the Bible told about the good things that were going to happen, and Jeremiah was always growling about the bad things that had happened. She must be a funny girl to figure all that out, don't you think? Then there are those two little girls in the Children's Ward,—the one with the hip disease that's been here two whole years, and the other that's got pugnacious aenemia. I'd like awful well to see them, 'cause neither one has a mother. And there's the weenty, weenty woman with nervous prospertation, but I'm most p'ticularly interested in Billy Bolee.
"Nurse Redfern brought him in to see me a few minutes ago, while you were eating your breakfast. Isn't he the prettiest little fellow you ever saw, and hasn't he got the worst name? I don't see what his mother could be thinking about to call him that."