But the canon had lifted his hand to silence him.
“My dear young friend, a policy like yours would decimate the House of Commons and abolish the House of Lords. Practical religion has a sweet reasonableness. We are all human, even if we are all gentlemen; and while silly young things——”
But John Storm was out in the hall and putting on his hat to see Glory.
Glory had not yet awakened from her trance. While others were living in to-day she was still going about in yesterday. The emotion of the theatre was upon her, and the world of reality took the tone and colour of drama. This made her a tender woman, but a bad nurse.
She began the day in the Outpatient Department, and a poor woman came with a child that had bitten its tongue. Its condition required that it should remain in the house a day or two. “Let me put the pore thing to bed; she's allus used to me,” said the woman piteously. “Are you the mother?” said the Sister. “No, the grandmother.” “The mother is the only person who can enter the wards except on visiting day.” The poor woman began to cry. Glory had to carry the child to bed, and she whispered to the grandmother, “Come this way,” and the woman followed her. When they came to the surgical ward, she said to the nurse in charge, “This is the child's mother, and she has come to put the poor little thing to bed.”
Later in the morning she was sent up to help in the same ward. A patient in great pain called to her and said, “Loosen this bandage for me, nurse; it is killing me!” And she loosened it.
But the glamour of the theatre was upon her as well as its sentiment and emotion, and in the space before the bed of one of the patients, at a moment when the ward Sister was away, she began to make imitations of Beatrice and Benedick and the singer of “Sigh no more, ladies.” The patient was Koenig, the choirmaster of “All Saints',” a little fat German with long mustaches, which he waxed and curled as he lay in bed. Glory had christened him “the hippopotamus,” and at her mimicry he laughed so much that he rolled and pitched and dived among the bedclothes.
“Ach, Gott!” he cried, “vot a girl! Never—I haf never heard any one so goot on de stage. Vot a voice, too! A leetle vork under a goot teacher, and den, mein Gott! Vot is it de musicians say?—the genius has a Cremona inside of him on which he first composes his immortal vorks. You haf the Cremona, my dear, and I will help you to bring it out. Vot you tink?”
It was the hour of the morning when the patients who can afford it have their newspapers brought up to them, but the newspapers were thrown aside; every eye was on Glory, and there was much noisy laughter and even some clapping of hands.
Ward Sister Allworthy entered with the house doctor.