She looked her mail over casually; there were the usual number of advertisements, a letter from one of the nurses who had gone South, and another in an unfamiliar hand-writing. She tore off the corner of the last, and, running her finger down the flap, she commented:
"Looks like quality. A letter outside the profession is a very rare thing for me."
She read the letter through without a sound, and then she read it again, the House Surgeon watching, the old big-brother look gone for ever from his face, and in its place a worshipful proprietorship. The effect of the letter was undeniably Aprilish; she looked up at the House Surgeon with the most radiant of smiles, while her eyes spilled recklessly over.
"How did you know it? How did you know it?" she repeated.
He was trying his best to find out what it was all about when one of the nurses came hurrying down the corridor.
"You are both wanted down in the board-room. They have called a special meeting of the trustees for nine o'clock; everybody's here and acting decidedly peculiar, I think. Why, as I passed the door I am sure I saw the President slapping the Senior Surgeon on the back. I never heard of anything like this happening before."
"Come," said Margaret MacLean to the House Surgeon. "If we walk down very slowly we will have time enough to read the letter on the way."
As the nurse had intimated, it was an altogether unprecedented meeting. Formality had been gently tossed out of the window; after which the President sat, not behind his desk, but upon it—an open letter in his hand. His whole attitude suggested a wish to banish, as far as it lay within his power, the atmosphere of the previous afternoon.
"Here is a letter to be considered first," he said, a bit gravely. "It makes rather a good prologue to our reconsideration of the incurable ward," and the ghost of a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. "This is from the widow of the Richest Trustee." He read, slowly:
"MESDAMES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE BOARD,—I thank you for your courtesy in asking me to fill my husband's place as one of the trustees of Saint Margaret's. Until this afternoon I had every intention of so doing; but I cannot think now that my husband would wish me to continue his support of an institution whose directors have so far forgotten the name under which they dispense their charity as to put science and pride first. As for myself—I find I am strongly interested in incurables—your incurables. Yours very truly"