A welcoming shout went up from Ward C as Margaret MacLean entered. It
was lusty enough to have come from the throats of healthy children, and
it would have sounded happily to the most impartial ears; to the nurse
in charge it was a very pagan of gladness.
"Wish you good morning, good meals, and good manners," laughed Margaret
MacLean; and then she went from crib to crib with a special greeting
for each one. Oh, she firmly believed that a great deal depended on
how the day began.
In the first crib lay Pancho, of South American parentage, partially
paralyzed and wholly captivating. He had been in Saint Margaret's
since babyhood--he was six now--and had never worn anything but a
little hospital shirt.
"Good morning, Brown Baby," she said, kissing his forehead. "It's just
the day for you out on the sun-porch; and you'll hear birds--lots of
them."
"Wobins?"
"Yes, and bluebirds, too. I've heard them already."
Next came Sandy--merry of heart--a humpback laddie from Aberdeen. His
parents had gone down with the steerage of a great ocean liner, and
society had cared for him until the first horror of the tragedy had
passed; then some one fortunately had mentioned Saint Margaret's, and
society was relieved of its burden. In the year he had spent here his
Aberdonian burr had softened somewhat and a number of American
colloquialisms had crept into his speech; but for all that he was "the
braw canny Scot"--as the House Surgeon always termed him--and he
objected to kisses. So the good-morning greeting was a hearty
hand-shake between the two--comrade fashion.
"It wad be a bonnie day i' Aberdeen," he reminded her, blithely. "But
'tis no the robins there 'at wad be singin'."
"Shall I guess?"
"Na, I'll tell ye. Laverocks!"
"Really, Sandy?" And then she suddenly remembered something. "Now you
guess what you're going to have for supper to-night."
"Porridge?"
"No; scones!"
"Bully!" And Sandy clapped his hands ecstatically.
Beside Sandy lay Susan--smart, shrewd, and American, with braced legs
and back, and a philosophy that failed her only on Trustee Days. But
as calendars are not kept in Ward C no one knew what this day was; and
consequently Susan was grinning all over her pinched, gnome-like little
face. Margaret MacLean kissed her on both cheeks; the Susan-kind
hunger for affection, but the world rarely finds it out and therefore
gives sparingly.
"Guess yer couldn't guess what I dreamt last night, Miss Peggie?"
"About the aunt?" This was a mythical relation of Susan's who lived
somewhere and who was supposed to turn up some day and claim Susan with
open arms. She was the source of many dreams and of much interested
conversation and heated argument in the ward, and the children had her
pictured down to the smallest detail of person and clothes.
"No, 'tain't my aunt this time. I dreamt you was gettin' married, Miss
Peggie." And Susan giggled delightedly.
"An' goin' away?" This was groaned out in chorus from the two cots
following Susan's, wherein lay James and John--fellow-Apostles of
pain--bound closely together in that spiritual brotherhood. They were
sitting up, holding hands and staring at Margaret with wide,
anguish-filled eyes.
"Of course I'm not going away, little brothers; and I'm not going to
get married. Does any one ever get married in Saint Margaret's?"
The Apostles thought very hard about it for a moment; but as it had
never happened before, of course it never would now, and Miss Peggie
was safe.
The whole ward smiled again. But in that moment Margaret MacLean
remembered what the House Surgeon had said, and wondered. Was she
building up for them an ultimate discontent in trying to make life
happy and full for them now? Could not minds like theirs be taught to
walk alone, after all? And then she laughed to herself for worrying.
Why should the children ever have to do without her--unless--unless
something came to them far better--like Susan's mythical aunt? The
children need never leave Saint Margaret's as long as they lived, and
she never should; and she passed on to the next cot, content that all
was well.
As she stooped over the bed a pair of thin little arms flew out and
clasped themselves tightly about her neck; a head with a shock of red
curls buried itself in the folds of the gray uniform. This was
Bridget--daughter of the Irish sod, oldest of the ward, general
caretaker and best beloved; although it should be added in justice to
both Bridget and Margaret MacLean that the former had no consciousness
of it, and the latter took great care to hide it.
[Illustration: As she stooped over the bed a pair of thin little arms
flew out and clasped themselves tightly about her neck.]
It was Bridget who read to the others when no one else could; it was
Bridget who remembered some wonderful story to tell on those days when
Sandy's back was particularly bad or the Apostles grew over-despondent;
and it was Bridget who laughed and sang on the gray days when the sun
refused to be cheery. Undoubtedly it was because of all these things
that her cot was in the center of Ward C.
Concerning Bridget herself, hers was a case of arsenical poisoning,
slowly absorbed while winding daisy-stems for an East Broadway
manufacturer of cheap artificial flowers. She had done this for three
years--since she was five--thereby helping her mother to support
themselves and two younger children. She was ten now and the Senior
Surgeon had already reckoned her days.
In the shadow of Bridget's cot was Rosita's crib--Rosita being the
youngest, the most sensitive, and the most given to homesickness. This
last was undoubtedly due to the fact that she was the only child in the
incurable ward blessed in the matter of a home. Her parents were
honest-working Italians who adored her, but who were too ignorant and
indulgent to keep her alive. They came every Sunday, and sat out the
allotted time for visitors beside her crib, while the other children
watched in a silent, hungry-eyed fashion.
Margaret MacLean passed her with a kiss and went on to
Peter--Peter--seven years old--congenital hip disease--and all boy.
"Hello, you!" he shouted, squirming under the kiss that he would not
have missed for anything.
"Hello, you!" answered back the administering nurse, and then she
asked, solemnly, "How's Toby?"
"He's--he's fine. That soap the House Surgeon give me cured his fleas
all up."
Toby was even more mythical than Susan's aunt; she was based on certain
authentic facts, whereas Toby was solely the creation of a dog-adoring
little brain. But no one was ever inconsiderate enough to hint at his
airy fabrication; and Margaret MacLean always inquired after him every
morning with the same interest that she bestowed on the other occupants
of Ward C.
Last in the ward came Michael, a diminutive Russian exile with valvular
heart trouble and a most atrocious vocabulary. The one seemed as
incurable as the other. Margaret MacLean had wrestled with the
vocabulary on memorable occasions--to no avail; and although she had
long since discovered it was a matter of words and not meanings with
him, it troubled her none the less. And because Michael came the
nearest to being the black sheep of this sanitary fold she showed for
him always an unfailing gentleness.
"Good morning, dear," she said, running her fingers through the
perpendicular curls that bristled continuously.
"Goot mornun, tear," he mimicked, mischievously; and then he added,
with an irresistible smile, "Und Got-tam-you."
"Oh, Michael, don't you remember, the next time you were going to say
'God bless you'?"
"Awright--next time."
Margaret MacLean sighed unconsciously. Michael's "next time" was about
as reliable as the South American _mañana_; and he seemed as much an
alien now as the day he was brought into the ward. And then, because
she believed that kindness was the strongest weapon for victory in the
end, she did the thing Michael loved best.
Ward C was turned into a circus menagerie, and Margaret MacLean and her
assistant were turned into keepers. Together they set about the duties
for the day with great good-humor. Two seals, a wriggling
hippopotamus, a roaring polar bear, a sea-serpent of surprising
activities, two teeth-grinding alligators, a walrus, and a baby
elephant were bathed with considerable difficulty and excitement. It
was Sandy who insisted on being the elephant in spite of a heated
argument from the other animals that, having a hump, he ought to be a
camel. They forgave him later, however, when he squirted forth his
tooth-brush water and trumpeted triumphantly, thereby causing the
entire menagerie to squirm about and bellow in great glee.
At this point the head keeper had to turn them all back instantly into
children, and she delivered a firm but gentle lecture on the
inconsiderateness of soaking a freshly changed bed.
Sandy broke into penitent tears; and because tears were never allowed
to dampen the atmosphere of Ward C when they could possibly be dammed,
Margaret MacLean did the "best-of-all-things." She pushed the cribs
and cots all together into a "special" with observation-cars; then,
changing into an engineer, and with a call to Toby to jump aboard, she
swung herself into the caboose-rocker and opened the throttle. The
bell rang; the whistle tooted; and the engine gave a final snort and
puff, bounding away countryward where spring had come.
Those of you who live where you can always look out on pleasant places,
or who can travel at will into them, may find it hard to understand how
wearisome and stupid it grows to be always in one room with an
encompassing sky-line of roof-tops and chimneys, or may fail to sound
the full depths of wonder and delight over the ride that Ward C took
that memorable day.
The engineer pointed out everything--meadows full of flowers, trees
full of birds, gardens new planted, and corn-fields guarded by
scarecrows. She slowed up at the barnyards that the children might
hear the crowing cocks and clucking hens with their new-hatched broods,
and see the neighboring pastures with their flocks of sheep and tiny
lambs.
"A ken them weel--hoo the wee creepits bleeted hame i' Aberdeen!"
shouted Sandy, bleeting for the whole pastureful.
And when they came to the smallest of mountain brooks the engineer
followed it, down, down, until it had grown into a stream with
cowslipped banks; and on and on until it had grown into a river with
little boats and sandy shore and leaping fish. Here the engineer
stopped the train; and every one who wanted to--and there were none who
did not--went paddling; and some went splashing about just as if they
could swim.
Back in the "special," they climbed a hilltop, slowly, so that the
engineer could point out each farm and pasture and stream in miniature
that they had seen close by.
"That's the wonder of a hilltop," she explained; "you can see
everything neighboring each other." And when they reached the crest
she clapped her hands. "Oh, children dear, wouldn't it be beautiful to
build a house on a hilltop just like this to live in always!"
Afterward they rode into deep woods, where the sunlight came down
through the trees like splashes of gold; and here the engineer
suggested they should have a picnic.
As Margaret MacLean stepped out into the hall to look up the
dinner-trays she met the House Surgeon.
"Dreading it as much as usual?" he asked, in the teasing, big-brother
tone; but he looked at her in quite another way.
She laughed. "I'm hoping it isn't going to be as bad as the time
before--and the time before that--and the time before that." She
pushed back some moist curls that had slipped out from under her
cap--engineering was hard work--and the little-girl look came into her
face. She looked up mischievously at the House Surgeon. "You couldn't
possibly guess what I've been doing all morning."
The House Surgeon wrinkled his forehead in his most professional
manner. "Precautionary disinfecting?"
Margaret MacLean laughed again. "That's an awfully good guess, but
it's wrong. I've been administering antitoxin for trusteria."
In spite of her gay assurance before the House Surgeon, however, it was
rather a sober nurse in charge of Ward C who sat down that afternoon
with a book of faery-tales on her knee open to the story of "The
Steadfast Tin Soldier." As for Ward C, it was supremely happy; its
beloved "Miss Peggie" was on duty for the afternoon with the favorite
book for company; moreover, no one had discovered as yet that this was
Trustee Day and that the trustees themselves were already near at hand.
A shadow fell athwart the threshold that very moment. Margaret MacLean
could feel it without taking her eyes from the book, and, purposefully
unmindful of its presence, she kept reading steadily on:
"'The paper boat was rocking up and down; sometimes it turned round so
quickly that the Tin Soldier trembled; but he remained firm, he did not
move a muscle, and looked straight forward, shouldering his musket.'"
"Ah, Miss MacLean, may I speak with you a moment?" It was the voice of
the Meanest Trustee.
The nurse in charge rose quickly and met him half-way, hoping to keep
him and whatever he might have to say as far from the children as
possible.
The Meanest Trustee continued in a little, short, sharp voice: "The
cook tells me that the patients in this ward have been having extra
food prepared for them of late, such as fruit and jellies and scones
and even ice-cream. I discovered it for myself. I saw some pineapples
in the refrigerator when I was inspecting it this afternoon, and the
cook said it was your orders."
Margaret MacLean smiled her most ingratiating smile. "You see," she
said, eagerly, "the children in this ward get fearfully tired of the
same things to eat; it is not like the other wards where the children
stay only a short time. So I thought it would be nice to have
something different--once in a while; and then the old things would
taste all the better--don't you see? I felt sure the trustees would be
willing."
"Well, they are not. It is an entirely unnecessary expense which I
will not countenance. The regular food is good and wholesome, and the
patients ought to feel grateful for it instead of finding fault."
The nurse looked anxiously toward the cots, then dropped her voice half
an octave lower.
"The children have never found fault; it was just my idea to give them
a treat when they were not expecting it. As for the extra expense,
there has been none; I have paid for everything myself."
The Meanest Trustee readjusted his eye-glasses and looked closer at the
young woman before him. "Do you mean to say you paid for them out of
your own wages?"
The nurse nodded.
"Then all I have to say is that I consider it an extremely idiotic
performance which had better be stopped. Children should not be
indulged."
And he went away muttering something about the poor always remaining
poor with their foolish notions of throwing away money; and Margaret
MacLean went back to the book of faery-tales. But as she was looking
for the place Sandy grunted forth stubbornly:
"A'm no wantin' ony scones the nicht, so ye maun na fetch them."