ps; passing milk at eleven and
three; keeping the white bedspreads in geometrical order. But the
Avenue Girl was taboo. The boycott had been instituted by Old
Maggie. The rampant respectability of the ward even went so far as
to refuse to wash her in those early morning hours when the night
nurse, flying about with her cap on one ear, was carrying tin basins
about like a blue-and-white cyclone. The Dummy knew nothing of the
washing; the early morning was the time when he polished the brass
doorplate which said: Hospital and Free Dispensary. But he knew
about the drinking cup and after a time that became his
self-appointed task.

On Sundays he put on his one white shirt and a frayed collar two
sizes too large and went to chapel. At those times he sat with his
prayer book upside down and watched the Probationer who cared for
his lady and who had no cap to hide her shining hair, and the
_interne_, who was glad there was no cap because of the hair. God's
fool he was, indeed, for he liked to look in the _interne's_ eyes,
and did not know an _interne_ cannot marry for years and years, and
that a probationer must not upset discipline by being engaged. God's
fool, indeed, who could see into the hearts of men, but not into
their thoughts or their lives; and who, seeing only thus, on two
dimensions of life and not the third, found the Avenue Girl holy and
worthy of all worship!

* * * * *

The Probationer worried a great deal.

"It must hurt her so!" she said to the Senior. "Did you see them
call that baby away on visiting day for fear she would touch it?"

"None are so good as the untempted," explained the Senior, who had
been beautiful and was now placid and full of good works. "You
cannot remake the world, child. Bodies are our business here--not
souls." But the next moment she called Old Maggie to her.

"I've been pretty patient, Maggie," she said. "You know what I mean.
You're the ringleader. Now things are going to change, or--you'll go
back on codliver oil to-night."

"Yes'm," said Old Maggie meekly, with hate in her heart. She loathed
the codliver oil.

"Go back and straighten her bed!" commanded the Senior sternly.

"Now?"

"Now!"

"It hurts my back to stoop over," whined Old Maggie, with the ward
watching. "The doctor said that I----"

The Senior made a move for the medicine closet and the bottles
labelled C.

"I'm going," whimpered Old Maggie. "Can't you give a body tim