of this. "I don't
see that that makes it any easier for us if they _do!_" she said in a
recalcitrant voice. She stepped wide to avoid a pile of filth on the
sidewalk, and clutched at her skirt. She had a sudden vision of the
white-tiled, velvet-carpeted florist's shop in a corner of Aunt
Victoria's hotel where, behind spotless panes of shining plate-glass,
the great clusters of cut-flowers dreamed away an enchanted
life--roses, violets, lilies of the valley, orchids....

"Here we are at the hospital," said Mrs. Marshall, a perplexed line
of worry between her brows. But at once she was swept out of herself,
forgot her seriously taken responsibility of being the mother of a
girl like Sylvia. She was only Barbara Marshall, thrilled by a noble
spectacle. She looked up at the great, clean, many-windowed facade
above them, towering, even above the huge bulk of the gas-tanks across
the street, and her dark eyes kindled. "A hospital is one of the most
wonderful places in the world!" she cried, in a voice of emotion. "All
this--to help people get well!"

They passed into a wide, bare hall, where a busy young woman at a desk
nodded on hearing their names, and spoke into a telephone. There
was an odd smell in the air, not exactly disagreeable, yet rather
uncomfortably pungent. "Oh, iodoform," remarked the young woman at the
desk, hearing them comment on it. "Do you get it? We don't notice it
_here_ at all."

Then came Miss Lindstroem's sister, powerfully built, gaunt, gray, with
a professional, impersonal cheerfulness. The expedition began. "I'll
take you to the children's ward first," said Miss Lindstroem; "that
always interests visitors so much...."

Rows on rows of little white beds and white, bloodless faces with an
awful patience on them, and little white hands lying in unchildlike
quiet on the white spreads; rows on rows of hollow eyes turned in
listless interest on the visitors; nurses in white, stepping briskly
about, bending over the beds, lifting a little emaciated form, deftly
unrolling a bandage; heat; a stifling smell of iodoform; a sharp
sudden cry of pain from a distant corner; somewhere a dully beating
pulse of low, suppressed sobs....

They were out of the children's ward now, walking along a clean bare
corridor. Sylvia swallowed hard. Her eyes felt burning. Judith held
her mother's hand tightly. Miss Lindstroem was explaining to Mrs.
Marshall a new system of ventilation.

"This is one of the women's ward