sses
there one by one.

But the patient seemed to shake her head, though with a motion scarcely
perceptible.

She could talk no more.

Tilda lay back thinking.

"Sister!" she said, twenty minutes later, when the Second Nurse entered
the ward. The Second Nurse had charge just now, the matron being away
on her August holiday.

"Well, dear?"

"She wants something." Tilda nodded towards the next bed.

"To be sure she does, and I'm going to give it to her." The Second
Nurse, composed in all her movements, bent over the medicine table.

"Garn!" retorted Tilda. "It's easy seen you wasn' brought up along with
animals. Look at the eyes of her."

"Well?" The Second Nurse, after a long look at the patient, turned to
Tilda again.

"You mind my tellin' you about Black Sultan?"

"Of course I do. He was the one with the bearing rein and the white
martingale. Miss Montagu rode him."

"Right-O!" Tilda nodded. "Well, they used to come on next turn to mine,
which was the Zambra Fambly, as before the Crowned 'eads--only there
wasn' no fambly about it, nor yet no 'eads. Me bein' 'andy an' dressed
up, with frizzy 'air, they stood me on a tub with a 'oop, makin' believe
'twas for Miss Montagu to jump through; but of course she didn', reely.
When she came round to me she'd only smile and touch me playful under
the chin; and that made the sixpenny seats say, ''Ow womanly!' or, 'Only
think! able to ride like that and so fond of children!' Matter of fact,
she 'ad none; and her 'usband, Mike O'Halloran, used to beat her for it
sometimes, when he'd had a drop of What-killed-Aunty. He was an
Irishman."

"You didn't start to tell me about Mr. O'Halloran."

"No. He wasn' your sort at all; and besides, he's dead. But about
Black Sultan--Miss Montagu used to rest 'im, 'alf-way in his turn, while
the clown they called Bimbo--but his real name was Ernest Stanley--as't
a riddle about a policeman and a red 'errin' in a newspaper. She always
rested alongside o' me; and I always stood in the same place, right
over a ring-bolt where they made fast one of the stays for the trapeze;
and regular as Black Sultan rested, he'd up with his off hind foot and
rub the pastern-bone, very soft, on the ring-bolt. So one day I
unscrewed an' sneaked it, jus' to see what he'd do. When he felt for it
an' missed it, he gave me a look. That's all. An' that's what's the
matter with '_er_."

"But what can she be missing?" asked the Second Nu