XX.—IN MR. VALES CHURCH
S soon as Mr. and Mrs. Fairfax returned Sister Julia went back to her work at the great hospital. Mrs. Fairfax begged her to stay through the holidays, and the children coaxed and coaxed, but to no avail, for she knew that “little lame Madeline,” as every one called her, was longing for her to come. Madeline had been in the hospital once before, and for almost a year, but now she had come back to stay. The doctors said she would never be able to leave it again, nor would she be there very long. The best of care and kindest of nursing must soon fail to cage the little spirit in any house that human hands had made.
“I can understand how you feel that you must go,” Mrs. Fairfax had said to Sister Julia at the close of a long talk they had been having about it; “but it does seem too bad that you should take up your hospital work again without having had a vacation.”
“Vacation!” laughed Sister Julia. “Why, I have just come home from the happiest vacation of my life!”