here were brasses to
clean and three meals a day; and there was chapel on Sunday, where
one held a book--the Dummy held his upside down--and felt the
vibration of the organ, and proudly watched the afternoon sunlight
smiling on the polished metal of the chandelier and choir rail.
* * * * *
The Probationer sat turning the bandage machine and watching the
Dummy, who was polishing the brass plates on the beds. The plates
said: "Endowed in perpetuity"--by various leading citizens, to whom
God had given His best gifts, both heart and brain.
"How old do you suppose he is?" she asked, dropping her voice.
The Senior Nurse was writing fresh labels for the medicine closet,
and for "tincture of myrrh" she wrote absently "tincture of mirth,"
and had to tear it up.
"He can't hear you," she said rather shortly. "How old? Oh, I don't
know. About a hundred, I should think."
This was, of course, because of his soul, which was all he had, and
which, having existed from the beginning, was incredibly old. The
little dead mother could have told them that he was less than
thirty.
The Probationer sat winding bandages. Now and then they went
crooked and had to be done again. She was very tired. The creaking
of the bandage machine made her nervous--that and a sort of
disillusionment; for was this her great mission, this sitting in a
silent, sunny ward, where the double row of beds held only querulous
convalescent women? How close was she to life who had come to soothe
the suffering and close the eyes of the dying; who had imagined that
her instruments of healing were a thermometer and a prayer-book; and
who found herself fighting the good fight with a bandage machine
and, even worse, a scrubbing brush and a finetooth comb?
The Senior Nurse, having finished the M's, glanced up and surprised
a tear on the Probationer's round young cheek. She was wise, having
trained many probationers.
"Go to first supper, please," she said. First supper is the Senior's
prerogative; but it is given occasionally to juniors and
probationers as a mark of approval, or when the Senior is not
hungry, or when a probationer reaches the breaking point, which is
just before she gets her uniform.
The Probationer smiled and brightened. After all, she must be doing
fairly well; and if she were not in the battle she was of it.
Glimpses she had of the battle--stretchers going up and down in the
slow elevator; sheeted figures
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