not have told even the fathers and mothers; or if you
had, no one there but the doctor and the nurses would have believed you.
They knew only too well. But two things you could make out, with no
trouble at all, by the lamplight: one, that they were one and all on the
homeward stretch to health and vigor--Gimpy himself was a different lad
from the one who had crept shivering to bed the night before; and this
other, that they were the sleepiest crew of youngsters ever got together.
Before they had finished the first verse of "America" as their good night,
standing up like little men, half of them were down and asleep with their
heads pillowed upon their arms. And so Miss Brass, the head nurse,
gathered them in and off to bed.

"And now, boys," she said as they were being tucked in, "your prayers."
And of those who were awake each said his own: Willie his "Now I lay me,"
Mariano his "Ave," but little Bent from the Eastside tenement wailed that
he didn't have any. Bent was a newcomer like Gimpy.

"Then," said six-year-old Morris, resolutely,--he also was a Jew,--"I
learn him mine vat my fader tol' me." And getting into Bent's crib, he
crept under the blanket with his little comrade. Gimpy saw them reverently
pull their worsted caps down over their heads, and presently their tiny
voices whispered together, in the jargon of the East Side, their petition
to the Father of all, who looked lovingly down through the storm upon his
children of many folds.

The last prayer was said, and all was still. Through the peaceful
breathing of the boys all about him, Gimpy, alone wakeful, heard the deep
bass of the troubled sea. The storm had blown over. Through the open
windows shone the eternal stars, as on that night in the Judean hills when
shepherds herded their flocks and

"The angels of the Lord came down."

He did not know. He was not thinking of angels; none had ever come to his
slum. But a great peace came over him and filled his child-soul. It may be
that the nurse saw it shining in his eyes and thought it fever. It may be
that she, too, was thinking in that holy hour. She bent over him and laid
a soothing hand upon his brow.

"You must sleep now," she said.

Something that was not of the tenement, something vital, with which his
old life had no concern, welled up in Gimpy at the touch. He caught her
hand and held it.

"I will if you will sit here," he said. He could not help it.

"Why, Jimmy?" She stroked back his sho