She was penetrated
through and through with thankfulness, yet thanks to herself seemed so
irrelevant that she did not care to hear them.

There was more than Annie who thought that thanks to her were out of
place and superfluous. This was specially so with one among the group of
younger men, who at the moment of entering the ward had been fully alive
to the circumstance that "the pretty nurse," as she was known to them,
was on active duty. They had speculated on whether she would stand an
operation, and what a disturbance and nice mess there would be if she
fell flat on the small of her back on the floor, or went off in a fit of
hysterics in the middle of it; and how their "boss" would endure such a
disconcerting interruption to the proceedings. As it happened, the
speculators were in their turn startled, abashed, or irritated,
according to their respective temperaments and frames of mind, by what
followed.

But there was a young giant, with a blonde beard, who let his blue eyes
fall on the floor, drew back till he leant against the wall, and
thrusting his hands into his pockets, asked himself in a dazed, humbled
way, if an angel had come down among them, and where was the good of
presuming to thank an angel? It was a thousand times more officious and
audacious than to disregard the hackneyed quotation about the folly of
painting a lily and perfuming a rose.

Annie, the moment she could be spared, went to her own room, fell down
on her knees, and cried as if her heart would break. Yet they were not
unhappy, but blissful tears, though they were as much for her own
unworthiness as for God's unmerited goodness.

Then she snatched up a sheet of paper and wrote home. "I was so
discontented--such a peevish wretch, this morning, but I have had a
tonic, and now I am so unspeakably satisfied with my lot in life that I
believe I am the happiest girl in England to-night. I would not change
places with a hundred old Aunt Pennys, only I know, alas! that I am not
half good enough to be a nurse. Yet I would rather be a nurse than any
other character in the world, and I would not go back for a permanency
to dear old Redcross, after which I was hankering this very morning, and
live at home with you all again, leading the aimless, self-seeking life
I led, not though Mr. Carey's bank were to rise out of its ashes and
flourish to an extent that its greatest upholders never dreamt of--not
though I were to get a pension or an earl's ran