--he bent down over Claribel,--"you might
as well have dinner now, and stop the row."

Not ungently, he placed the squirming mass in the baptismal dress
beside the girl on the bed. With the instinct of ages, the baby
stopped wailing and opened her mouth.

"The little cuss!" cried Al, delighted. "Ain't that me all over?
Little angel-face the minute I get to the table!"

Unresisting now, Claribel let Rose uncover her firm white breast.
The mother's arm, passively extended by Rose to receive the small
body, contracted around it unconsciously.

She turned and looked long at the nuzzling, eager mouth, at the red
hand lying trustfully open on her breast, at the wrinkled face, the
indeterminate nose, the throbbing fontanelle where the little life
was already beating so hard.

"A girl, Rose!" she said. "My God, what am I going to do with her?"

Rose was not listening. The Junior Medical's turn had come at last.
Downstairs in the chapel, he was standing by the organ, his head
thrown back, his heavy brown hair (which would never stay parted
without the persuasion of brilliantine) bristling with earnestness.

"_O'er all the way, green palms and blossoms gay_,"

he sang, and his clear tenor came welling up the staircase to Liz,
and past her to the ward, and to the group behind the screen.

"_Are strewn this day in festal preparation,
Where Jesus comes to wipe our tears away--
E'en now the throng to welcome Him prepare._"

On the throne-chair by the record-table, the Nurse sat and listened.
And because it was Easter and she was very happy and because of the
thrill in the tenor voice that came up the stairs to her, and
because of the page in the order-book about bran baths and the rest
of it, she cried a little, surreptitiously, and let the tears drop
down on a yellow hospital record.

The song was almost done. Liz, on the stairs, had fed her baby
twenty minutes too soon, and now it lay, sleeping and sated, in her
lap. Liz sat there, brooding over it, and the last line of the song
came up the staircase.

"_Blessed is He who comes bringing sal-va-a-a-ation!_"

the Junior Medical sang.

The services were over. Downstairs the small crowd dispersed slowly.
The minister shook hands with the nurses at the door, and the Junior
Medical rolled up his song and wondered how soon he could make
rounds upstairs again.

Liz got up, with her baby in her arms, and padded in to the
throne-chair