ight Assistant had summoned Jane Brown to clean instruments.

At five o'clock that morning she was still sitting on a stool beside
a glass table, polishing instruments which made her shiver. All
around were things that were spattered with blood. But she looked
anything but fluttery. She was a very grim and determined young
person just then, and professional beyond belief. The other things,
like washing window-sills and cutting toe-nails, had had no
significance. But here she was at last on the edge of mercy. Some
one who might have died had lived that night because of this room,
and these instruments, and willing hands.

She hoped she would always have willing hands.

She looked very pale at breakfast the next morning, and rather
older. Also she had a new note of authority in her voice when she
telephoned the kitchen and demanded H ward's soft-boiled eggs. She
washed window-sills that morning again, but no longer was there
rebellion in her soul. She was seeing suddenly how the hospital
required all these menial services, which were not menial at all but
only preparation; that there were little tasks and big ones, and one
graduated from the one to the other.

She took some flowers from the ward bouquet and put them beside
Johnny's bed--Johnny, who was still lying quiet, with closed eyes.

The Senior Surgical Interne did a dressing in the ward that morning.
He had been in to see Augustus Baird, and he felt uneasy. He vented
it on Tony, the Italian, with a stiletto thrust in his neck, by
jerking at the adhesive. Tony wailed, and Jane Brown, who was the
"dirty" nurse--which does not mean what it appears to mean, but is
the person who receives the soiled dressings--Jane Brown gritted her
teeth.

"Keep quiet," said the S.S.I., who was a good fellow, but had never
been stabbed in the neck for running away with somebody else's wife.

"Eet hurt," said Tony. "Ow."

Jane Brown turned very pink.

"Why don't you let me cut it off properly?" she said, in a strangled
tone.

The total result of this was that Jane Brown was reprimanded by the
First Assistant, and learned some things about ethics.

"But," she protested, "it was both stupid and cruel. And if I know I
am right----"

"How are you to know you are right?" demanded the First Assistant,
crossly. Her feet were stinging. "'A little knowledge is a dangerous
thing.'" This was a favorite quotation of hers, although not
Browning. "Nurses in hospitals are there to carr