he realised, with a little
smile, how far she was from white porcelain and tiled walls. On the
scrubbed deal floor there stood a white deal tub, clean as new milk,
round and copper bound. Towels and soaps and sponges were there in
plenty, and great metal ewers full of hot and cold water, and nothing
else but one chair in all the scrubbed cleanliness. The woman poured
the water over her as she crouched in the fragrant wooden pool and
dried her gently and quickly in towels pressed away in lavender, with
the deft, sure movements of one well practised in her business; but
when she lay, just happily tired from the new exertion, among the
fragrant sheets, a tiny shadow seemed about to haunt her sleep. She
placed the little discomfort with difficulty, but at length expressed
it.

"That tub is very heavy, now," she said drowsily. "Is there a man to
lift it?"

For the first time the woman smiled. Till then she had been hands and
feet merely, tireless and tactful, but impersonal: now she smiled, and
her face was very sweet.

"I shall empty it," she said. "I am quite strong. Go to sleep, now."

Very soon again the doctor came, and at her quiet request gave her news
of husband, children and home; all well, it seemed, and smoothly
ordered. Days of absolute stillness had broken the habit of insistent
speech, and many things that once would have said themselves before she
thought, now halted behind her lips and seemed not worth the muscular
effort. But one thing she did mention.

"Ought not the nurses here to have more help?" she asked. "Mine lifts
out my bath-water every day. Are there not servants enough? I could
pay for it..."

"There are no servants here at all," he said, "and there is nobody you
could pay more than you are already paying."

"Then they are all nurses?"

"There are no trained nurses here, if you mean that," he said.

"Then who--what is the woman who takes care of me?" she asked, vaguely
displeased.

"She is one of the daughters of the house," he said. "She is no more a
nurse than her mother is a cook or her sister a laundress. They do
what is to be done, that is all. Each has done and can do the others'
tasks."

She felt in some way corrected, yet it was hard to say in what she had
offended. But Dr. Stanchon was an odd man in many ways. "All the
same," she persisted, "I think I had better have a nurse, now. I shall
feel more comfortable. Ask Miss Jessop if she could come out to me