"Oh!" she exclaimed, much hurt; "do you really think there is anything I would not do for you, if I could?"
"Well, this is mere trifle," I answered. "I want you to take that sturdy much be-ribboned darling of yours to see my poor sick souls in the hospital. A sight of his small face would cheer them. Will you?"
"Why, surely," she said. "How could you doubt it? I shall be delighted."
"And there was another thing—"
"Oh, don't hesitate like that," she exclaimed. "You can't think how you hurt me."
"I very much wish you would take charge of the flowers in the hospital for me, that was what I was going to say, I should be so pleased if you should make them your special care. If you would cut them yourself, and take them and arrange them whenever fresh ones are wanted, you would be giving me as much pleasure as the patients. And you might say something kind to them as you pass through the wards. Even a word makes all the difference in their day."
"Why didn't you ask me to do this before?" she said, reproachfully.
"I was a little afraid of asking you now," I answered.
"I shall begin to-morrow," she said. "Tell me the best time for me to go?"
There is a great deal in the way a thing is put, was my trite reflection afterward. If I had given Evadne my reason for particularly wishing her to visit the hospital, she would have turned it inside out to show me that it was lined with objections; but, now, because I had asked her to oblige me simply, she was ready to go; and would have gone if had cost her half her comfort in life. This was a great step in advance. As in the small-pox epidemic, so now at the hospital, she had no horror of anything she saw. It was always what she imagined that made her morbid.