g women in Asia, the most devout, the
most useful. Government gave hospitals and doctors into their hands;
they took the whole charge of certain schools. They differed in
complexion, some of the newly arrived being delightfully fresh and pink
under their starched bandeaux; but they were all official, they all
walked discreetly and directly about their business, with a jangle of
keys in the folds of their robes, immensely organised, immensely under
orders. Hilda, when she had time, had the keenest satisfaction in
contemplating them. She took the edge off the fact that she was not
quite one, in aim and method, with these dear women as they supposed
her to be, with the reflection that after all it might be worth while
to work out a solution of life in those terms, standing aside from the
world--the world was troublesome--and keeping an unfaltering eye upon
the pity of things, an unfaltering hand at its assuagement. It was
simple and fine and indisputable, this work of throwing the clear shadow
of the Cross upon the muddy sunlight of the world; it carried the boon
of finality in itself. One might be stopped and put away at any moment,
and nothing would be spoiled, broken, unfinished; and it absolutely
barred out such considerations as were presented by Hamilton Bradley.
There was a time early in her probation when she thought seriously that
if it were not Stephen Arnold it should be this.

She begged to be put on hospital work, and was sent for her indiscretion
to teach in the Orphanage for Female Children of British Troops. The
first duty of a novice was to be free of preference, to obey without
a sigh of choice. On the third day, however, Sister Ann Frances,
supervising, stopped at the open schoolroom door to hear the junior
female orphans repeating in happy chorus after their instructress the
statement that seven times nine were fifty-six. I think Hilda saw
Sister Ann Frances in the door. That couldn't go on, even in the name
of discipline, and Miss Howe was placed at the disposal of the Chief
Nursing Sister at the General Hospital next day. Sister Ann Frances
was inclined to defend Hilda's imperfect acquaintance with primary
arithmetic.

"We all have our gifts," she said. "Miss Howe's is not the
multiplication table; but neither is mine stage-acting." At which,
the upper lip lengthened further into an upward curving smile, and
the Mother Superior remarked cautiously that she hoped Miss Howe would
develop one for makin