“Yes,” said Sister Margaret, a little unsteadily, “to see you.”
“Reckon,” said the boy, looking up, “he’s going to kill two birds with one stone. What he’s really coming for is to see—”
“Twenty,” she commanded, “silence!”
“Is to-morrow visiting day?” asked the thin voice of Nineteen, sleepily.
“To-morrow,” replied Nurse Crowther. “And mind you’re nice and bright, Saucy Face, by three o’clock against your mother comes.”
In the ward the next day occurred the usual excitement that preceded an afternoon for visitors. Little Nineteen alone uninterested; it almost seemed that he had ceased to take concern in worldly matters such as the arrival of apples and other contraband, and to be content, when not asleep, with staring very hard at the ceiling. Bobbie himself, cheered by receipt of a kindly note from Collingwood Cottage, gave his best endeavours to the task of enlivening Nineteen (“Sop me goodness,” said Bobbie, reproachfully to himself, “if I ain’t getting fond of the little beggar”), but with no result. Elsewhere in the ward movement and expectation; Sister Margaret and the nurses had trouble to preserve sanity amongst the boy patients. Thirty-five declared privately his opinion that all the clocks were slow; that someone had put them back on purpose; Thirty-five added darkly that if he could find the person responsible for the deed he would make it a County Court job. Nevertheless, the hour presently struck, and two minutes afterwards came the sound of many footsteps in the passage; the swing doors opened, and the visitors marched in under the narrow inspection of every scarlet-gowned occupant of every scarlet-counterpaned bed. There were sounds of kissing in different parts of the ward. Bobbie ordered Nineteen to wake up and look sharp about it, but little Nineteen did not answer.
“If you please, Miss, is there a boy named Robert Lancaster in this ward?”
Bobbie’s head came up. Nurse Crowther pointed him out to a young girl, dressed quietly, her hair rolled up into a neat bunch, and wearing brown gloves fiercely new. She carried a small paper bag, and looked casually at her silver watch as she advanced to the bedside of Twenty.
“What ho!” said Bobbie, not unkindly. “Who sent for you?”
“Mother told me I might come,” said Miss Trixie Bell, breathlessly, “and mother sent this bunch of the best grapes she could get in Spitalfields Market, and mother said I was to give you her kind regards, and tell you to get well as soon as you could.”