sound,' he said, 'you're so healthy, that we'll have to shoot you to get
you to the resurrection.' Then I felt better. He was a new doctor that
we'd called in toward the end. He knew how I was situated, and as he
seemed to think I'd make a good nurse, he got me a chance in the City
Hospital, where I could get my training. And Hattie, dear Hattie, what a
friend she's been! She and her ma and pa made me come and make my home
with them. It's since then that we've been like sisters."

At the sound, appositely occurring, of a cough in the neighboring room,
Aurora stopped and listened.

"Dear me!" she whispered. "D'you suppose she's lying awake?"

"She may be coughing in her sleep," he suggested.

"Yes," Aurora said dubiously, after further listening, and hearing
nothing more. "And if I should go in to see, I might wake her. The
bell-rope is right at the head of her bed; all she has to do is pull it
if she wants somebody to come. I was entertaining you with the story of
my life, wasn't I? Where had I got to? Oh, yes. There in the hospital I
just loved it. Perhaps you can't see how I could. I just did. I had lots
of hard work. The training was sort of thrown in in my case with other
duties, but there were the other nurses and the house-doctors, I grew
chummy with them all. I had fun with the patients, too. You don't know
how much good it does you to watch anybody get well; the majority get
well. It's good for them, besides, to have you jolly."

"Your gaiety of heart makes me think of the grass, Aurora, the blessed
ineradicable grass, that will grow anywhere, that you see pushing up
between the paving-stones of the hard city, and finding a foothold on
the blank of the rock, and fringing the top of the ruined castle, and
hiding the new-made graves."

Aurora, always simple-mindedly charmed with a compliment, paused long
enough to investigate Gerald's comparison, then resumed, with the effect
of taking a plunge into deep waters:

"But it was there I met the fellow who did me the worst turn of any....

"They brought him in with broken ribs one rainy night, after he'd been
knocked down in the street by a team and kicked by the horses. I wasn't
his regular nurse, but I was in and out of his room, and if he rang
while his regular nurse was at her meals, I'd go. Everybody knows that
when a man's sick he's liable to get sweet on this or that one of his
nurses.

"How I could have been mistaken in Jim Barton I can't see now. Sinc