ctually
feel as I used to when I was a little girl and Christmas Eve had come,
or Hallowe'en, and--and-- What other night in the year was it that I
used to feel creepy and expectant--as if something wonderful was going
to happen?"

The fire coughed twice, as if it would have liked to remind her that it
was May Eve, but felt it might be an intrusion.

"I believe," she continued, speculatively--"I believe I am going to
begin to think things and do them again; and what's more, I believe I
am going to like doing them."

The fire chuckled again, and danced about for a minute in an absurd
fashion; it was so absurd that one of the logs broke a sap-vessel.
After that the fire settled down to its intended vocation, that of
making dream-pictures out of red and gold flames, and black, charred
embers.

The widow of the Richest Trustee watched them happily for a long time,
until they became very definite and actual pictures. Then she got up,
went to her desk, and wrote two letters.

The first was addressed to "The Board of Trustees of Saint Margaret's
Free Hospital for Children"; the second was addressed to "Miss Margaret
MacLean." They were both sealed and mailed that night.

What befell the other trustees does not matter, either from the
standpoint of Fancy or of what happened afterward; moreover, it was
nearly midnight, and what occurs after that on May Eve does not count.

IX

THE LOVE-TALKER

All through the evening Saint Margaret's had been frankly miserable.
Nurses gathered in groups in the nurses' annex and talked about the
closing of the incurable ward and the going of Margaret MacLean. The
passing of the incurables mattered little to them, one way or another,
but they knew what it mattered to the nurse in charge, and they were
just beginning to realize what she had meant to them all. The
Superintendent felt so much concerned that she dropped her official
manner when she chanced upon Margaret MacLean on her way from supper.

"Oh, my dear--my dear"--and the Superintendent's voice had almost
broken--"what shall we do without you? You have kept Saint Margaret's
human--and wholesome for the rest of us."

The House Surgeon had been miserable unto the third degree. It had
forced him into doing all those things he had left undone for months
passed; and he bustled through the building--from pharmacy to
laboratory and from operating-room to supply-closets--giving the
impression of a very scientific man, w