"Don't! Oh, please, Sister, don't!"
"Well, dear, it shall depend upon you whether it goes. See, I am going to pin it here on the curtain, where you can look at it. If you are good it shall not be sent."
And sent it never was.
There was much to do for Mrs. 13, and distressing though the work might be, admiration for her endurance and for the simple trust with which she accepted all her pain, as "the touch of God's finger laid on her in love," could only make the Sister's labours a pleasure and a privilege.
It was different when she turned to a bed at the end of the ward, a little apart from the others, where lay, unconscious, one of those sad cases, repulsive and loathsome, in which "the King's image" is disfigured almost beyond recognition by a life of sin and self-indulgence.
At one time Sister Warwick had found it hard to be as careful and tender with these—pity she never failed in. But one day the thought came to her that perhaps these poor souls were included in "the least of these My brethren"—that perhaps these words might mean sometimes those farthest removed from Him. After that the work for them was infinitely easier.
At one o'clock she was in her own room again, to find someone waiting for her there—a young student. His hands were loaded with "a sight for sair een"—a great bunch of buttercups and grasses.
"My mother is up in town to-day, Sister," he said, "and she asked me to bring these to you. They were picked only this morning and so are not at all battered, as you see."
"They are delightful; a real bit of the country for my poor 'children' to feast their eyes on."
Sister stretched out her hand for the golden posy, then an instinct prompted her to look more directly at the boy's face. His mother was her friend; she had promised to be an elder sister to this only son of hers, and she saw that her elder-sisterliness was wanted now.