d the house surgeon, with his grave face and
preoccupied air; and for some time Ida lay in a kind of semi-torpor,
feeling that everything that was going on around her were the unreal
actions in a dream; but as she grew stronger she began to take an
interest in the life of the great ward and her fellow-patients; and on
the second day after her return to consciousness, began a conversation
with her next-door neighbour, a pleasant-looking woman who had eyed her
wistfully several times, but who had been too shy to address "the young
lady." She was a country woman from Dorsetshire--up to London on a
visit "to my daughter, miss, which is married to a man as keeps a
dairy." It was her first visit to London; she had wandered from her
daughter's lost her, and, in her confusion, tumbled down the cellar of
a beer-shop. She told Ida the history of some of the other cases, and
Ida found herself listening with an interest which astonished her.

Nurse Brown, seeing the two talking, nodded approvingly.

"That's right," she said, with a smile. "You keep each other company.
It passes the time away."

Very soon, Ida found herself taking an interest in everything that went
on, in the noiseless movements of the nurses, in the arrival of a new
case, in the visit of the doctors and the chaplain, and the friends of
the other patients. Let the pessimists say what they may, there is a
lot of good in human nature; and it comes out quite startlingly in the
ward of a hospital. Ida was amazed at the care and attention, the
patience and the devotion which were lavished on herself and her
fellow-sufferers; a devotion which no money can buy, and which could
not have been exceeded if they had one and all been princesses of the
blood royal.

One instance of this whole-souled devotion and unstinting charity
occurred on the third day and brought the tears to her eyes, not only
then but whenever she thought of it in the after years. A tiny mite of
a baby, only a few weeks old was brought into the ward and laid in a
cot not very far from Ida's bed. The nurses and the doctors crowded
round it with eager attention. It was watched day and night; if it
cried, at the first note of the feeble wail, a couple of nurses flew to
the cot, and, if necessary, a famous physician was telephoned for: and
came promptly and cheerfully. The whole ward was wrapped up in the tiny
mite, and Ida leant on her elbow and craned forward to get a glimpse of
it; and felt towards it