Who more than hospital nurses appreciate these short-lived breaks in their lives, these little visits from their own people that flash sunshine and warmth into the dark corners?
And the flowers too. What would hospital life be without the flowers? Have we not already seen some of the many happy uses to which they may be put?
The typhoid—No. 10—was a poor flower-girl. She had not failed to notice how the nurses loved the fair blossoms, and with reviving life her warm little heart filled with gratitude for the tenderness and care she had received. She could only think of one vent for her feelings.
"Look here, Sister," she said. "I generally stand at the top o' Cheapside or thereabouts. Do come my way. I'll be looking out for you. And I'll give you such a bowkay!"
Susie, if she was inclined to fret for "mother" and "home," had a plucky little soul with which to greet other woes. Just to-day she was feeling it very perplexing that, in spite of a decidedly hungry appetite, she was knocked off her dinner altogether. She tried not to grumble, but her face was very wistful until Sister came and explained that the doctors wished it, and that in the afternoon she was to "have on a clean night-gown and such a pretty bed-jacket that is waiting in my room, and I shall tie up your hair with this nice piece of blue ribbon. We are going to take you to see the doctors instead of their coming to see you to-day. You know how kind they are, don't you, little maid?"
Susie had nothing but gentleness to remember, and fortunately she did not connect Sister's words with the great cruel lump on her leg that was sapping her little life and giving her those sudden sharp pains that often drew her little lips together with a pathetic "Oh!"
It was thus that Sister Warwick tenderly shielded the child as much as possible from the terrors of anticipating an unknown ordeal, and Susie went smiling in Sister's arms to the operating theatre. She only had one short moment of fear when she found herself laid on that very strange bed, with so many strange faces round her.
Then she went to sleep. She supposed so, for she opened her eyes again in the long, quiet ward, with the bright flowers on the table and Sister beside her, one hand resting on her curls, and the other holding her tiny wrist. Sister was smiling too. Seeing this, Susie guessed there was nothing to be frightened at, though down in her little heart she fancied she should have been afraid of something—she did not know what—if she had waked to find herself alone.
She drank the milk that was given her, and feeling drowsy sighed a "Good night, Sister," turned a very white little face sideways upon the pillow, and slept again—this time a natural satisfactory slumber.
Susie never realised what a blessed thing had happened to her during that confused time. For she was hardly old enough to connect that "going to see the doctors" with the fact that her "poor, poor leg," as she called it, grew rapidly well from that day.