mond thought he
might go and ask Mr. Raymond to take him to see Nanny. He found him at
home. His servant had grown friendly by this time, and showed him in
without any cross-questioning. Mr. Raymond received him with his usual
kindness, consented at once, and walked with him to the Hospital, which
was close at hand. It was a comfortable old-fashioned house, built in
the reign of Queen Anne, and in her day, no doubt, inhabited by rich and
fashionable people: now it was a home for poor sick children, who were
carefully tended for love's sake. There are regions in London where a
hospital in every other street might be full of such children, whose
fathers and mothers are dead, or unable to take care of them.

When Diamond followed Mr. Raymond into the room where those children who
had got over the worst of their illness and were growing better lay, he
saw a number of little iron bedsteads, with their heads to the walls,
and in every one of them a child, whose face was a story in itself.
In some, health had begun to appear in a tinge upon the cheeks, and a
doubtful brightness in the eyes, just as out of the cold dreary winter
the spring comes in blushing buds and bright crocuses. In others there
were more of the signs of winter left. Their faces reminded you of
snow and keen cutting winds, more than of sunshine and soft breezes
and butterflies; but even in them the signs of suffering told that the
suffering was less, and that if the spring-time had but arrived, it had
yet arrived.

Diamond looked all round, but could see no Nanny. He turned to Mr.
Raymond with a question in his eyes.

"Well?" said Mr. Raymond.

"Nanny's not here," said Diamond.

"Oh, yes, she is."

"I don't see her."

"I do, though. There she is."

He pointed to a bed right in front of where Diamond was standing.

"That's not Nanny," he said.

"It is Nanny. I have seen her many times since you have. Illness makes a
great difference."

"Why, that girl must have been to the back of the north wind!" thought
Diamond, but he said nothing, only stared; and as he stared, something
of the old Nanny began to dawn through the face of the new Nanny. The
old Nanny, though a good girl, and a friendly girl, had been rough,
blunt in her speech, and dirty in her person. Her face would always
have reminded one who had already been to the back of the north wind
of something he had seen in the best of company, but it had been coarse
notwithstanding, partly from