mouth.

The Junior Medical went away with his shoulders erect in his
frock-coat, and his heavy brown hair, which would never part
properly and had to be persuaded with brilliantine, bristling with
happiness.

And the Nurse-Queen, looking over her kingdom for somebody to lavish
her new joy on, saw Claribel lying in bed, looking at the ceiling
and reading there all the tragedy of her broken life, all her
despair.

So she rustled out to the baby-room, where the new baby had never
batted an eye since her bath and was lying on her back with both
fists clenched on her breast, and she did something that no trained
nurse is ever supposed to do.

She lifted the baby, asleep and all, and carried her to her mother.

But Claribel's face only darkened when she saw her.

"Take the brat away," she said, and went on reading tragedies on the
ceiling.

Liz came and proffered her the little mite with every art she knew.
She showed her the wrinkled bits of feet, the tiny, ridiculous
hands, and how long the hair grew on the back of her head. But when
Liz put the baby on her arm, she shuddered and turned her head away.
So finally Liz took it back to the other room, and left it there,
still sleeping.

The fine edge of the Nurse's joy was dulled. It is a characteristic
of great happiness to wish all to be well with the world; and here
before her was dry-eyed despair. It was Liz who finally decided her.

"I guess I'll sit up with her to-night," she said, approaching the
table with the peculiar gait engendered of heel-less hospital
carpet-slippers and Mother Hubbard wrappers. "I don't like the way
she watches the ceiling."

"What do you mean, Elizabeth?" asked the Nurse.

"Time I had the twins--that's before your time," said Liz--"we had
one like that. She went out the window head first the night after
the baby came, and took the kid with her."

The Nurse rose with quick decision.

"We must watch her," she said. "Perhaps if I could find--I think
I'll go to the telephone. Watch the ward carefully, Elizabeth, and
if Annie Petowski tries to feed her baby before three o'clock, take
it from her. The child's stuffed like a sausage every time I'm out
for five minutes."

Nurses know many strange things: they know how to rub an aching back
until the ache is changed to a restful thrill, and how to change the
bedding and the patient's night-dress without rolling the patient
over more than once, which is a high and desirable form of
kn