en wide for mortals to wander back
again. No, not one of the board remembered; the trustees sat looking
straight at the primroses and saw nothing, felt nothing, guessed
nothing.
They were not unusual types of trustees who served on the board of
Saint Margaret's. You could find one or more of them duplicated in the
directors' book of nearly any charitable institution, if you hunted for
them; the strange part was, perhaps, that they were gathered together
in a single unit of power. Besides the Oldest and the Meanest
Trustees, there were the Executive, the Social, the Disagreeable, the
Busiest, the Dominating, the Calculating, the Petty, and the Youngest
and Prettiest. She came fluttering in a minute late from her tea; and
right after her came the little gray wisp of a woman, who sat down in a
chair by the door so unpretentiously as to make it appear as though she
did not belong among them. When the others saw her they nodded
distantly: they had just been talking about her.
It seemed that she was the widow of the Richest Trustee. The board had
elected her to fill her husband's place lest the annual check of ten
thousand--a necessary item on Saint Margaret's books--might not be
forthcoming; and this was her first meeting. It was, in fact, her
first visit to the hospital. She could never bear to come during her
husband's trusteeship because, children having been denied her, she had
wished to avoid them wherever and whenever she could, and spare herself
the pain their suggestion always brought her. She would not have come
now, but that her husband's memory seemed to require it of her.
For years gossip had been busy with the wife of the Richest Trustee--as
the widow she did not relax her hold. What the trustees said that day
they only repeated from gossip: the little gray wisp of a woman was a
nonentity--nothing more--with the spirit of a mouse. She held no
position in society, and what she did with her time or her money no one
knew. The trustees smiled inwardly and reckoned silently with
themselves; at least they would never need to fear opposition from her
on any matter of importance.
The last person of all to enter the boardroom was the Senior Surgeon.
The President had evidently waited for him, for he nodded to the House
Surgeon to close the doors the moment he came.
Now the Senior Surgeon was a man who used capitals for Surgery,
Science, and Self, unconsciously eliminating them elsewhere. He had
be
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