Here Sister Cumberland joined them. These three women—so different in character, so united in aim and purpose—felt then the sustaining power of a friendship that was standing the wear and tear of life.
Seeing how worried the elder "Sister" was by the present, the other two drew her thoughts back to the past and to their earlier experiences in the ward.
"Do you remember?" was the introduction to many reminiscences Sister Cumberland recalled that night on duty, when she fought her fiercest fight with the craving for sleep.
Nurse Carden talked of Tommie the waif and his whimsical ways. He could not be forgotten, for it was not many days since at the lodge-gate of her own home she had seen the Tommie of to-day. Such a contrast! A sturdy, ruddy, honest country lad, loving his life as a gardener's boy, and always ready, if questioned, to say, "Oh, I belong to Nurse Carden, I do! I ain't got nobody else! But she is good to me, she is!"
So the three talked until the hour struck which took them to their various duties and closed the second of these days my pen has tried to describe—days chosen not because they were remarkably different from many others, but because they give an average picture of the cares and anxieties, the pleasures and interests that belong to a hospital Sister's life; because, too, they tell of an experience that had a lasting effect in softening Sister Warwick's character and in extending her influence over the nurses in her charge.
[THE END.]
[GUS.]
Ya want ti knaw aboot ma maate Gus? Set ya doon, then, an' ah'll tell ya all aboot it.