e," repeated the applicant. "I see--an e----"

The words died on her lips. She was looking past a crowd of birds on
the windowsill to where, just inside, Billy Grant and the Nurse in a
very mussed cap were breakfasting together. And as she looked Billy
Grant bent over across the tray.

"I adore you!" he said distinctly and, lifting the Nurse's hands,
kissed first one and then the other.

"It is hard work," said Miss Smith--having made a note that the boys
in the children's ward must be restrained from lowering a pasteboard
box on a string from a window--"hard work without sentiment. It is
not a romantic occupation."

She waved an admonitory hand toward the window, and the box went up
swiftly. The applicant looked again toward the pavilion, where
Billy Grant, having kissed the Nurse's hands, had buried his face in
her two palms.

The mild October sun shone down on the courtyard, with its bandaged
figures in wheel-chairs, its cripples sunning on a bench, their
crutches beside them, its waterless fountain and dingy birds.

The applicant thrilled to it all--joy and suffering, birth and
death, misery and hope, life and love. Love!

The H.N. turned to her grimly, but her eyes were soft.

"All this," she said, waving her hand vaguely, "for eight dollars a
month!"

"I think," said the applicant shyly, "I should like to come."

GOD'S FOOL

I

The great God endows His children variously. To some He gives
intellect--and they move the earth. To some He allots heart--and the
beating pulse of humanity is theirs. But to some He gives only a
soul, without intelligence--and these, who never grow up, but remain
always His children, are God's fools, kindly, elemental, simple, as
if from His palette the Artist of all had taken one colour instead
of many.

The Dummy was God's fool. Having only a soul and no intelligence, he
lived the life of the soul. Through his faded, childish old blue
eyes he looked out on a world that hurried past him with, at
best, a friendly touch on his shoulder. No man shook his hand in
comradeship. No woman save the little old mother had ever caressed
him. He lived alone in a world of his own fashioning, peopled by
moving, noiseless figures and filled with dreams--noiseless because
the Dummy had ears that heard not and lips that smiled at a
kindness, but that did not speak.

In this world of his there was no uncharitableness--no sin. There
was a God--why should he not know his Father?--t