Sometimes in her rambles she had to pinch herself to make
sure this was all really happening. But always in her rambles she
saw St. Hospital peopled with children--boys, girls, and little
toddlers--chasing one another across the lawns, laughing at
hide-and-seek in the archways, bruising no flower-bed, filling old
souls with glee. They were her playmates, these innocents of her
fancy, the long day through. At evening in her prayers she called
them home, and they came reluctant--

No, no, let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly
And the hills are all covered with sheep.

The tunnel was populous with them as she passed through it from the
garden to the ambulatory, and at the end of the tunnel she came plump
upon Branny and Uncle Copas in converse. They started guiltily.

"I've been looking for you this half-hour," said Brother Copas,
recovering himself. "Didn't a certain small missy make an
appointment with me to be shown the laundry and its wonders?
And isn't this Tuesday--ironing day?"

"You promised to show it to me _some time_," answered Corona, who was
punctilious in small matters; "but you never fixed any time in
p'tic'lar."

"Oh, then I must have made the appointment with myself! Never mind;
come along now, if you can spare the time."

Nurse Branscome nodded and left them, turning in at the stairway
which led to her quarters in the Nunnery. At the foot of it she
paused to call after them--

"Mind, Corona is not to be late for her tea! I've invited myself
this evening, and there is to be a plum cake in honour of the
occasion."

Brother Copas and Corona passed down the ambulatory and by the
porter's lodge to the outer court. Of a sudden, within a few paces
of the laundry, Brother Copas halted to listen.

"You had better stop here for a moment," he said, and walked forward
to the laundry door, the hasp of which he lifted after knocking
sharply with his staff. He threw the door open and looked in,
surveying the scene with an angry disgust.

"Hallo! More abominations?" exclaimed Brother Copas.

The quarrel had started in the forenoon over a dirty trick played by
Brother Clerihew, the ex-butler. (Brother Clerihew had a name for
underhand practice; indeed, his inability to miss a chance of it had
cost him situation after situation, and finally landed him in St.
Hospital.) This time he had played it upon poor