st. ebbe's was a model hospital, with every enlightened improvement in the treatment of the sick poor, and every humane ordinance which the highly developed skill and the strongly stimulated benevolence of the nineteenth century could enforce.
annie millar was one of six lady probationers, including a bishop's daughter, two daughters of squires, and three doctor's daughters like herself. the matron was the widow of a doctor, who had been eminent alike for professional talent and philanthropy. she was like-minded. if she had not her late husband's knowledge and acumen as a medical man, she had much of his experience, and was full of energy and determination to better the world, the sick, and the poor, almost whether they would or not. very few people could look mrs. hull in the face and contradict her high motives and determined will.
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fortunately, annie's beauty had not worked the scathing destruction which mrs. millar had anticipated with fear and trembling. an inflammable medical student or two might have been just singed by the fire of her charms; an older member of the fraternity might have neglected for an instant to look up at the card above a bed in order to turn his head and cast a second admiring glance after the new recruit in the hospital uniform; but no man forgot his duty or was false to earlier vows through her allurements.
mrs. hull had cast a sharp glance at the dainty figure and flower-like face under the nurse's linen gown and close cap. annie's sister probationers, four of them considerably older than herself, had telegraphed to each other emphatic—perhaps pardonable enough—signals that the last accession to their number was so very ornamental they could hardly expect her to be useful. they must look out for defects, and prepare to atone for failures by their surpassing attainments. but the mistake was soon rectified, and fresh light dawned on the doubtful question. mrs. hull was the first to recognize and testify that nothing was to be feared from annie millar's youth and beauty, while something might be gained by them, because she was far more than pretty—she was a bright, clever girl, very obedient to orders, and exceedingly anxious
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to learn her business. in her st. ebbe's had secured an auxiliary of the highest promise. the elder sister probationers soon found that instead of wanting indulgence, forbearance, and pity, the newcomer was more in danger of awakening their envy as well as their respect by her quickness in mastering details, her mental grasp of principles, her inexhaustible spirit.
yet poor annie had no light apprenticeship to serve. the programme, which extends from making poultices and making beds to receiving doctors' instructions, understanding them, remembering them, and acting on them, is neither short nor easy, though a fairly good and trained intellect and an unswerving devotion to duty will get through it triumphantly in time. annie underwent the entire ordeal, while she doubtless brought a little additional intelligence and capacity and a few more grains of experience to the task than would have existed if she had not been dr. millar's daughter. in spite of the warm woollen jacket and cuffs which she wore under her linen gown, her little hands were covered with the chaps and chilblains which are the scourge of maids-of-all-work, because of their early rising, hard scrubbing, and the frequency with which their fingers are wet and dried on chill winter mornings. her legs ached, as they had never ached after a night's dancing, with being on
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her feet all day long, and day after day, waiting on her patients and attending on the sisters who were placed over the respective wards. her mind, too, was kept on the stretch with the serious charge of pulses and temperatures, with the grave responsibility of shelves on shelves of medicine bottles, with acquiring the best modes of bandaging, fomenting, bleeding, stopping the flow of blood, so that during the little leisure she had she could not turn to a book for relief; she fell asleep with sheer fatigue more frequently.
annie was too high-spirited and independent to feel the loneliness of her position among strangers, whom she soon converted into friendly acquaintances, if nothing more, as many a girl—as dora, for instance—would have done. but, accustomed as annie had been all her life to much closer and warmer relations, she clung to the presence of rose in london; and it was a proof of how much the elder sister was used up, when, even on her days and hours for getting out, it was often with difficulty that she could bring herself to go and see rose, or to meet and walk a portion of the way with her on rose's progress from mrs. jennings's boarding-house to the misses stone's school, where she taught drawing, or to mr. st. foy's art classes, where she learned it.
annie had suffered considerably from what is
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known as hospital or infirmary sore throat, because it is understood to be caused by inhaling the fumes from the carbolic acid used in the wards. her rich colour had to rose's dismay grown poor and pale for a time. she had laboured under the still more trying and more dangerous infliction, when the senses morbidly excited become morbidly acute, and she seemed still to smell the peculiar air of the wards wherever she went. then mrs. hull insisted on annie's leaving for a few days, and bundled her off, without the power of resistance, to a sister of the matron's, who kindly consented, as her part of the work, to receive and recruit the temporarily overdone servants of st. ebbe's hospital.
in spite of the strength of annie's nerves, and her power of controlling them, she sickened once or twice with a deadly sickness at sights and sounds worse than her most vivid imagination could have conceived possible. she had to summon all her courage, together with the conviction that if she did not overcome the weakness speedily, she would be compelled to own that she had mistaken her calling, in order to vanquish the insidious foe.
sometimes, while she was ready to thank god that it was rather the exception than the rule, she had to witness the lowest moral degradation in addition to the sharpest human suffering, and this at an age and with a nature when the feeling of
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extreme repulsion, amounting to positive loathing, is in danger of prevailing. it needed all her faith to do battle with this worst temptation, and force pity to conquer disgust, to recognize humbly the frailty of the best and wisest men and women, to acknowledge willingly, even thankfully, the propriety, if one may so use the word, of what a preacher has called each christian's suffering, "the just for the unjust."
no wonder poor annie's bright face took frequently a worn and harassed look in those early days of hospital work.
yet so great is the elasticity of youth, and so brave and cheerful was the girl's temperament for the most part, that within an hour of such prostrating attacks and violent revolts, she would be on her way with her own little tea-pot to the retiring-room, where the lady probationers and sisters assembled in order to profit by the great boiler steaming on the hob for their women's refreshment of tea. it was about the only servile act which they were required to do for themselves, while they were the servants of others, and they all enjoyed doing it with true housewifely relish. annie, especially, was an adept at such tea-making, and would propound her theories and circulate specimens of her performance among her companions who profited by her skill, with a glee not far removed from the
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mirth of the millar girls on many a happy family gathering in the old nursery or the drawing-room at redcross.
the whole circumstances of one of the bad days in her lot annie could never quite forget. it was a raw, gray winter's day, cheerless above and below, and all went wrong on it, from the moment annie opened her sleepy eyes, leapt shivering out of bed, washed in cold water by her own choice, in order to rouse herself, dressed by gaslight, swallowed her coffee scalding hot, and hastened to her particular ward. the sister and the house-surgeon were, as if affected by the day, a little sour and surly, and every patient seemed more or less out of tune, dismal, grumbling, delirious, or in a state of collapse.
it was one of annie's out-days, and as a matter of duty, but by no means of enjoyment, she braced herself to change her hospital dress for a walking dress. after she felt chilled to the bone, she started for a walk, either to be jostled and forced along in a crowded thoroughfare, where she too might have said—
"although so many surround me,
i know not one i meet"—
or to creep the length of the cleanest side of the pavement in a depressingly empty street, where
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the varying arrangement of the shabby window curtains and the cards in the dingy windows, offering an endless supply of rooms to the absent lodging hunter, furnished the sole entertainment to the listless passer-by.
annie had been afraid that she would miss rose on her way to her classes, and the fear was amply fulfilled—not the most distant glimpse of rose was forthcoming. instead, at a crossing, ella carey, in her aunt tyrrel's carriage, whirled by the pedestrian and administered a slight spattering of mud to her dress. "it ought to have been the other way," said annie bitterly to herself, while she stood still to wipe the sleeve of her jacket. yet she knew very well all the time that ella's offence had been quite involuntary, and that she had not for a moment recognized annie. if it had been so, ella's round girlish face under its smart hat, leaning back among the soft cushions not discontentedly, would have brightened immensely. she would have stopped the carriage and been down in the street at annie's side in a moment, for the girl was as warm-hearted as she had been docile. there was nothing she would have liked better than to hail a redcross face, and hear the last news about phyllis and may, and ella's father and mother.
when annie re-entered the hospital colder and
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more unrefreshed than she had left it, she thought that she was at last going to be compensated for life's rubs—beyond her deserts, she told herself a little remorsefully. she had been longing all the morning for a letter from redcross, small reason as she had to complain of the negligence of her correspondents there, and a letter with the redcross post-mark was awaiting her. she saw before she opened it that it was not from any of her family. none of them used such creamily smooth and thick note-paper, or exhibited such a cunningly contrived, elegantly designed monogram. but even a slight communication from the merest acquaintance was welcome as a flower in spring, when the acquaintance dwelt in dear old redcross. annie had been thinking fondly of it all day as a place of human well-being and geniality, free from continual sights and sounds of pain and sorrow, where everybody got up and sat down, went out and came in, worked and read, even dawdled and dreamt at will, subject to a few simple household rules. there was no unyielding iron discipline at redcross. there was no hard and fast routine entering through the flesh and penetrating into the very soul. it was just, dear, deliberate, mannerly, yet comfortable and kindly redcross. the writer was thirza dyer, and the reason why one of the dyers, who had hesitated about shaking hands with one
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of the millars after she was guilty of proposing to earn her livelihood, wrote a letter to a nurse probationer and addressed it to a public hospital, calls for an explanation. the dyers, in their unceasing efforts to gain by their wealth and its liberal expenditure a footing in the county circle, had got one foot within the coveted precincts, and there thirza found to her own and her sisters' amazement that nursing, not the rich and great, but common poor people, was a curious fashion of the day. lady luxmore had a cousin who was a nurse. general wentworth's wife had a friend professionally engaged in a london hospital for nine months out of the twelve, who was visiting the wentworths this winter. of course it had begun with the crimean war, and the éclat with which lady nurses went out to attend on the wounded soldiers in the exceptional hospital at scutari. but whatever was its origin, the rule was established that nursing even day-labourers and mechanics with their wives and children, was something very different from being a drudging governess or broken-down companion. it was like being a member of the kyrle society, with which one of the princes had to do, or like singing in an east of london concert-room, quite chic, perfectly good form, anybody might take it up and gain rather than lose caste by the act.
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accordingly, it became an obvious obligation on the dyers to cultivate and not to cut the only nurse on their visiting list. with unblushing, well-nigh naïve suddenness, thirza dyer, to annie millar's bewildered astonishment, proceeded to start and maintain a correspondence with her. two are required for a bargain-making, and annie was not altogether disinterested in scribbling the few lines occasionally which warranted the continuance of the correspondence on thirza's part. for if thirza had lived anywhere else than where she did live, near redcross, the answer to her first letter might have been different. therefore annie did not perhaps deserve much solace from these letters, and certainly this one did not contribute to her exaltation of spirit. it was chiefly occupied with an account of several recherché afternoon teas which the dyers had held lately at the manor-house, together with a full description of the tea-gowns of salmon, canary, and cherry-coloured plush, lined with eau-de-nil satin, which the miss dyers had worn on these occasions.
now poor annie was rather above hankering unduly after tea-gowns, or for that matter "smart" or "swell" dress of any kind. she liked pretty things, and things which became her charming person, at their proper time and season, well enough, but she was not greatly discomposed by
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the lack of such adornment, and hardly at all troubled when her neighbours displayed what she did not possess.
it was because the foolishly exultant gorgeous description, which ought to have been set to a fashion-plate, carried annie back with a flash to one winter's day last year, that it made her heart sore. on the day in question annie and dora, and for that matter rose and may, acting as deeply interested assistants, had been tremendously busy and merry in the old nursery, travestying national and historic costumes in calico. it was all on behalf of a certain scenic entertainment given in the town-hall for the delectation of the scholars in the rector's sunday-school and night classes. it had been a very simple and intentionally inexpensive affair, and the principal charm to the performers had lain in the contriving of their costumes. annie and dora had appeared in magnificent chintz sacques—which might have represented tea-gowns—and mob caps, and had been declared by cyril carey, who was supposed to be no mean judge, a most satisfactory eighteenth century pair. cyril himself had broken the rule as to material, and had figured in the black satin trunk hose, velvet doublet, and lace collar of a spanish grandee. but ned hewett had stuck to turkey-red cotton for a venetian senator or a
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roman cardinal, nobody had been quite certain which. and tom robinson had been a scotch beggarman, sir walter scott's immortal edie ochiltree, in a blue cotton gown and a goatskin beard, which she (annie) had wickedly pretended must have been manufactured out of tufts purloined from the stock of boas at "robinson's." lucy hewett had been shrouded in white cotton wool, to represent the empress matilda escaping from oxford, "through the lines of king stephen's soldiers," under shelter of a snowstorm. fanny russell had never looked better than she looked that night as a norman peasant girl. it was all very well for cyril carey to condescend to the deceit of praising annie and dora up to the skies, when everybody knew whom he admired most, with reason. that was fanny russell, with her splendid black eyes and hair, and the norman strength and fineness of her profile.
what was nurse annie, in her holland gown, apron, and cap, recalling and revelling in? the silly vanities and child's play of the past. well, what harm was there in them? these had been blithe moments while they lasted, which had set young hearts bounding, young feet skipping, and young voices laughing and singing in a manner which was natural, and not to be forbidden lest worse came of it.
annie was roused from her pleasant reverie and
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plunged into another of a totally different description. the last was made up of garbled reality, but with what truth was in it tending to a false, doleful vision. it would represent st. ebbe's as a gloomy, ghastly prison-house of suffering and death, and she in her tender youth and sweet beauty immured in it by an error of judgment, a fatal mistake incidental to rash enthusiasm and total inexperience. if annie ever arrived at that rueful conclusion, how could she bear the penalty she must pay?
annie had heard and read of young women on whom the world did not cry shame, who turned from the decay and death they had not gone to seek, which providence had brought to their doors, in paroxysms of repugnance and rebellion. they could not bear that their perfection of health and life should come into contact with something so chillingly, gruesomely different, that their glowing youth should be wasted in the dim shadows of sick-rooms or amidst the dank vapours hovering over the dark river which all must ford when their time comes. those standing round who heard or read the outcry called it natural, piteous, well-nigh praiseworthy, it was so sincere. how could annie realize for herself in a moment that such heroines(!) are the daughters in spirit of the women who, in outbreaks of mediæval pestilence and latter-day cholera, have literally abandoned their nearest and
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dearest, fleeing from spectacles of anguish and risks of infection? how could she guess that such women are the spiritual sisters of poor heathen and savage hottentot and malay mothers and daughters, who, sooner than be burdened with the wailing helplessness of infancy and the mumbling fatuity of age, will expose the children dependent on these murderesses, and the hoary heads that once planned and prayed for the welfare of their slayers, to perish of cold and hunger?
it was annie's hour for resuming work, and it was well for her, though she went but languidly into the spotlessly white and clean ward, among its rows of beds with the flower-stand, illuminated texts and oleographs, which generous supporters of the hospital sent to brighten its cold bareness and soften and cheer what was harsh and subdued in its atmosphere. annie was not even greatly affected by the greeting of one of her patients, an elderly man recovering from an operation, and still slightly off his head when the fever rose on him. she went to him with a cooling, soothing application, and he told her incoherently to come again and give him his dinner and his tea. he liked a young lass or lady, be she which she liked, with red cheeks and shining eyes to wait upon him. it minded him of a bit wench of a daughter of his he had lost when she was twelve years—the age of the little wench in the bible, for parson had preached
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about her the sunday after his lass's funeral. it broke her mother's heart for all that, and he buried her too within three months. then the place got lonesome, and he took what was not good for him, till he had come to this; though whether it were the house or just an hospital he was lying in he could not clearly say.
then there happened what annie was wont to describe as a miracle of mercy to bring her to a better mind. a young boy whose leg had been crushed by a waggon was carried into the operating theatre for an immediate operation. it was the lecture hour, and a great professor of surgery with his class of students, together with several of the other doctors connected with st. ebbe's, was in attendance. but it was also customary, especially where a female patient or a patient so young as the boy in question was concerned, for a nurse, generally the sister of the ward, to be present to hold the sufferer's hand if it were wished, or when it was possible to support the poor head against her breast. it so chanced that the sister was out, and other available nurses were engaged, so in circumstances which would admit of no delay annie was for the first time called to the front and summoned to undertake the responsibility of the situation. already she had lost sight of herself, and was standing looking so calm, firm, and prepared for every emergency, that the operating
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surgeon, with a glance at her, put her youth and position as a probationer aside, and accepted what help she could give.
it was a critical case, and for some medical reason no anæsthetic could be administered. the boy was past the unconsciousness of childhood, and though nearly fainting with fright, pain, and weakness, remained quite sensible of the further ordeal he had to undergo. he was keenly alive to the humane motive which induced the surgeon to turn his back upon him in selecting his instruments. he even heard, with ears morbidly acute, the low words addressed to the interested spectators, "now, gentlemen, i am about to begin."
with a stifled sob the poor little fellow suddenly managed to raise himself from the table on which he was stretched. he looked round wildly on the circle of men's faces, controlled and expectant, with a certain every-day expression in anticipation of what, in its blind terror and life and death importance to him, was a familiar occurrence to them, and on the one woman's face, controlled too, but with an indescribable wistfulness under the control. then he made his childish appeal, shrill with misery, "oh, gentlemen, will you not stop till i say my prayers?"
there was an instant pause of surprise, commiseration, constraint—the peculiar awkwardness
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which in englishmen waits on any provocation to betray feeling. nobody liked to look at his neighbour to see how he looked, lest there should be the most distant sign of emotion in his own face. some strong men there had ceased to pray or to believe in prayer, yet all were more or less touched by the lad's implicit faith.
as for annie she had been praying at that very moment, praying fervently in the silence of her heart, that she might be saved from breaking down and allowed to be of some service to the boy.
"certainly, certainly, my little chap; but you must be quick about it," said the great surgeon a little hoarsely.
"our-father-which-art-in-heaven," began the boy, running the words together and speaking with a parrot-like monotony in an unnaturally high-pitched key. then his voice began to quaver a little till he stopped short with a cry of despair—"i cannot mind the words, i cannot say my prayers. oh! will nobody say them for me? if mother, as is not in lon'on, were here, she would do it fast," he ended, flinging out one thin arm and clutching convulsively at the air in a kind of panic-stricken terror.
there was another second's dead silence. it was broken by a woman's voice. annie had taken a step forward close to the boy's elbow, so that her voice was in his ear. she could not kneel,
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but instinctively she clasped her hands and bent her head reverently as she said in low but clear tones which were carried throughout the length and breadth of the room, and thrilled in every ear, the lord's prayer. at its close she went on without hesitation in the same wonderfully audible voice: "god bless this little boy. forgive him every wrong he has ever done. keep him safe, and raise him up again, for jesus christ's sake. amen."
another voice—a deeper one—responded to the "amen." it was said by the famous operator's enemies that he was lax in his religious opinions, and that he rarely found time to go to church. nevertheless it was he who with grave heartiness repeated the amen.
the little lad had sunk back when she began to speak, and there he lay without giving her a word or sign of thanks—his best acknowledgment of her compliance with what might be his last wish being his quaking submission. he could not keep still his quivering flesh, or hold back altogether his piercing cries and piteous moans, but he bit his tongue in seeking to stifle them. for he was not fighting with his maker and his fate; he was trying in his boyish way, with his small fortitude and resignation, to endure, in the might of the support which had been asked for him.
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annie too clenched her teeth, while she opened her eyes to take in everything that passed before them, as a mirror may be turned to receive the minutest impression from the scene it reflects. but she did not hear a single shriek or wail, because her ears were filled with the higher harmonies which she had called forth. she clasped one of the boy's trembling hands in her own warm one, which did not grow cold in the contact. she was on the alert to meet his only half-seeing gaze, and to give back a glance of tender sympathy and protection—the true mother's look that is to be found when occasion calls for it in every good woman's face,—ay, it may even be seen in the precociously earnest, kindly eyes of many a loving woman-child.
there were plenty of other helpers to render the surgeon all the assistance he needed in his work, with far more celerity and ability than annie could have supplied. but while sense lingered in the little patient's eyes, it was to the woman he turned for the pity and aid which did not fail him; it was through her that he drew from one mightier than all, the spiritual strength for his terrible bodily conflict. in a sense annie and he were both on their trial, they served their novitiate together, and helped each other to bear and overcome. when the operation was over he lay, with the sweat drops
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of agony which annie was gently wiping off, not gone from his forehead, but also with the reflection still lingering on his white face of the courage and patience with which he had been ready to meet death.
"you have behaved remarkably well, and shown no want of pluck, my lad," said the surgeon as a parting word of encouragement and cheer. "lie still and you'll be able to see your friends by and by. i believe you'll do famously, and we'll see whether a substitute cannot be found for the limb you have lost."
he turned to annie who had done all, and more than all, that was required of her, probably because she had entirely forgotten herself. she was not even then sensible of a swift reaction, an overwhelming tide of embarrassment. she continued more than half unconscious of the number of eyes which, now that the operation was over, were fixed upon her, marvelling, admiring, condemning, or ridiculing. for what act is there, let it be ever so disinterested or self-sacrificing, against which no voice will rise in condemnation or in mockery?
but it was not the operating surgeon who either condemned or scoffed at annie's conduct. he drew her aside, not speaking to her on the religious side of the episode, which he did not conceive that
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he had the smallest right or title to do, but addressing her on the purely medical aspect of the incident, on which he considered that he was entitled, nay, even bound to speak. his manner was a little blunt and brusque rather than suave, like that of a man who had no time to waste in paying compliments or making soft speeches, but it was thoroughly approving.
"you did quite right, nurse; i'm much obliged to you. that poor boy wanted all the comfort he could get. if he had gone on and worked himself into a frenzy before i had taken up the knife, i do not know that i could have done my work, and certainly the probability of his recovery would have been greatly lessened."
"i am glad," said annie simply, with a little gasp of returning consciousness. "it is good of you to say so, doctor," but it was doubtful whether she knew what she was saying. she was penetrated through and through with thankfulness, yet thanks to herself seemed so irrelevant that she did not care to hear them.
there was more than annie who thought that thanks to her were out of place and superfluous. this was specially so with one among the group of younger men, who at the moment of entering the ward had been fully alive to the circumstance that "the pretty nurse," as she was known to them,
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was on active duty. they had speculated on whether she would stand an operation, and what a disturbance and nice mess there would be if she fell flat on the small of her back on the floor, or went off in a fit of hysterics in the middle of it; and how their "boss" would endure such a disconcerting interruption to the proceedings. as it happened, the speculators were in their turn startled, abashed, or irritated, according to their respective temperaments and frames of mind, by what followed.
but there was a young giant, with a blonde beard, who let his blue eyes fall on the floor, drew back till he leant against the wall, and thrusting his hands into his pockets, asked himself in a dazed, humbled way, if an angel had come down among them, and where was the good of presuming to thank an angel? it was a thousand times more officious and audacious than to disregard the hackneyed quotation about the folly of painting a lily and perfuming a rose.
annie, the moment she could be spared, went to her own room, fell down on her knees, and cried as if her heart would break. yet they were not unhappy, but blissful tears, though they were as much for her own unworthiness as for god's unmerited goodness.
then she snatched up a sheet of paper and
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wrote home. "i was so discontented—such a peevish wretch, this morning, but i have had a tonic, and now i am so unspeakably satisfied with my lot in life that i believe i am the happiest girl in england to-night. i would not change places with a hundred old aunt pennys, only i know, alas! that i am not half good enough to be a nurse. yet i would rather be a nurse than any other character in the world, and i would not go back for a permanency to dear old redcross, after which i was hankering this very morning, and live at home with you all again, leading the aimless, self-seeking life i led, not though mr. carey's bank were to rise out of its ashes and flourish to an extent that its greatest upholders never dreamt of—not though i were to get a pension or an earl's ransom, or whatever else people count magnificent compensations and rewards. but you must not think that it is because i do not love you all as well and a thousand times better than i ever loved you, for that would be a great mistake, since i am just beginning to know your true value. but don't you understand it would break my heart to think that i should no longer be a nurse and never have such another experience as i have had this afternoon." and then she told them in a very few words what had happened and what the surgeon had said to her. how the sister of the ward, and
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the matron, and everybody she knew in st. ebbe's had congratulated her. they had all united in promising that the poor little fellow should be her patient in future; they had begun already to call him "miss millar's boy."
the little doctor not only wiped his spectacles, he held his head higher. mrs. millar read the letter again and again, appropriating it and carrying it in her pocket till it was worn to fragments. these were still religiously preserved and portions read to select and sympathetic audiences. and every time she read the lines herself with a full heart, she called on god to bless her good annie, and thought she was honoured among mothers in having such a daughter.
as for dora and may they were long of ceasing to talk with bated breath and the height of loving enthusiasm of how annie had mastered herself, and what a stay she had been in the hour of need to the lad. they planned and carried out their plans at every spare moment, in the manufacture of knitted socks and cravats for his benefit. but their great achievement was a quilted dressing-gown which dora contrived to cut out, and may, in spite of her bad sewing, to help to sew together, that in his convalescence he might sit up in bed like a little sick prince.
