No one knew who had started the custom. But some child, some sunny
morning, had broken out with it when Aunt Jane appeared. And the others
had taken it up, as children will; and now it had become a happy part of
the day's routine, as regular as the doctor's visit--or the night
nurse's rounds.
"Aunt Jane's come--Aunt Jane's come!"
They broke off from picture-books or blocks, to look up and call out and
pass the word along. Then they chanted it together.... And the newcomer
in the ward, a boy lying with bandaged face and eyes half closed,
turned a first curious, questioning look--to find the white-capped face
smiling down at him.
At the top of the house, at either end of the long corridor--in Dr.
Carmon's operating-room and here in the Children's Ward--Aunt Jane was
not the implacable personage that ruled elsewhere in the hospital.
She beamed down the ward.
A dozen hands reached out to her and she smiled to them and nodded and
scolded a little and fussed and drew them all into a happy sense that
this was home--and Aunt Jane a kind of new and glorified mother for
little children. All the sick ones and lame ones, and the bruised ones
and bandaged ones were Aunt Jane's children-- It did not seem like a
hospital, as one looked down the sunny room, so much as a place where
children were gathered in; pinched faces lighted up--for the first time
in life, perhaps--with round, shrewd, loving smiles for Aunt Jane;
delicate bandaged faces looked out at her wistfully and happily; and
laughing, rosy ones turned to her.
There were no unhappy ones there. "Children suffer and don't know," was
Aunt Jane's comment.
Sometimes as she stood among them she marvelled a little at the quiet
unconscious force that ignored pain, or adjusted itself to twinges. Some
child, with a look almost of impatience, would shift a bandaged leg or
foot to an easier position, as it listened to the story she was telling
or entered into some game of her contriving.
Sometimes it was a guessing game that was played by the whole ward at
once--a kind of twenty questions, shouted at her as she came in, her
hands held carefully behind her.... And, curiously, it was always some
little one that guessed first; some feeble one, just beginning to take
notice, that had a glimpse of Aunt Jane's broad back as she turned
casually with a serene unconscious look, or moved a little and revealed
the hidden thing behind her.
The whole ward was interested this morning in Jimmie Sullivan's new leg.
It was a frame-leg that got in the way when he walked and tripped him
up. He was a little proud of it, but more annoyed, as he came hurrying
down the ward to meet her.
Aunt Jane adjusted her spectacles and looked.
"Well, well!" she said.
Jimmie glanced down at it, a little proud and abashed. "It can't walk,"
he admitted.
"Want me to carry you?" asked Aunt Jane.
"No, sir!" He slipped a proud hand into hers and stumbled happily and
awkwardly along.
Aunt Jane moved toward a bed where a child lay strapped on his back,
hands and feet and head held fast, only his eyes free to turn to her
with a smile.
"How's Alec?" said Aunt Jane.
"All right," replied the child. "You going to tell a story?"
"Well--maybe. I don't know as I know any new stories," she said slowly.
She considered it.
"Tell an old one," said the boy. "Any old story," he added with a grim
smile under the crisscross bandages of the stiff face.
"Tell about the little red hen," piped a voice from the next bed.
"No--about billy-goat," from across the room.
"Tell about the old lady that runned away," came shrilling close at
hand.
Aunt Jane put her hands over her ears. "I can't hear anything," she
announced.
Their faces grew still and alert till she should move her hands a tiny
crack and they could shout again: "Billy-goat!" "The little red hen!"
"The lady that runned away!"
Jimmie Sullivan, half leaning against her, looked at them reproachfully.
"She can't tell nuthin' while you make such a racket!" he said.
"She likes it!--She likes it!--_She_ don't care!" They returned.
Aunt Jane looked at them and smiled. She took down her hands.
"Let me see--" She glanced from one bed to the other. "I am going to let
Edna choose.... She can whisper it to me." She went to a bed across the
room, Jimmie Sullivan's frame-leg clanking happily beside her, and bent
to the pillow.
The girl lifted a thin arm and threw it about Aunt Jane's neck to draw
her close.
Aunt Jane listened and lifted her head and smiled. "All right," she
announced.
The room was so still you could hear a pin drop. A nurse passing the
lower end of the ward, with a dish in her hand, paused and looked down
the quiet room. Every eye was fastened expectantly on the motherly
figure moving serenely about.... It crossed to the side of the room and
adjusted the skylight shade and brought a big rocker and placed it in
the middle of the room under the skylight and put a low chair for Jimmie
Sullivan, and another beside it for the child that was limping slowly
across to her.... A girl in a wheeled chair propelled herself swiftly
down the ward and came to a stop as close to the big rocker as she could
get.
Aunt Jane glanced slowly about the ward--at the expectant faces looking
at her from every bed.
"Now, the rest of you stay where you are!" she said severely.
They laughed and adjusted themselves, and then they were quiet again,
watching her intently.
She sat down in the big chair and rocked a little.
"Let me see--" She sat smiling thoughtfully; the smile ran along the
pillows--waiting.
"Once when I was a little girl----"
The pillows nestled a little and sighed happily and settled down; and
Aunt Jane's voice went on with the tale and the nurse at the end of the
ward passed out with her dish. The door swung to behind her.
The great sunny room was left to happiness and to Aunt Jane and to the
children and: "Once when I was a little girl."