"What did you say?" asked a strange voice from somewhere in the background, and a sweet face framed in glossy black hair bent over her.

"Maybe it's heaven after all," mused Peace to herself, "though I should think they would have dec'rations on the walls of heaven, 'nstead of leaving 'em naked." Then she spoke aloud, surprised at the effort it cost her, "Are you a dead nurse?"

"Do I look very dead?" questioned the strange voice again, and the face above her broke into a rare smile.

"Well, then, how did you get to heaven?"

"This isn't heaven, dear. You are in Danbury Hospital. Have you forgotten?"

"O, that's so. I remember now. It's nice to know you ain't an angel."

The nurse laughed outright. "Yes, I'm glad, too, for I want to live a long time. The world is full of so many things I want to see."

"That's me, too, but I thought I was dead sure this time."

"No, dear, you are very much alive and are going to get well."

"That's good, but what's the matter? I can't get my breath."

"It's the ether, childie. You will be all right soon, but you must not talk now. Just rest. Sleep if you can, so you can visit with Grandfather and Grandmother Campbell. They are anxious to see you."

Meanwhile, downstairs in the office of the great hospital, the President and his wife had sat like statues through all those interminable minutes which were to tell the story of whether the little life was to be spared or sacrificed. Vaguely they heard the bustle of busy nurses, vaguely they saw the doctors hurrying in and out about their duties; but not once did either man or woman move from the great chairs in which they sat. Sometimes it seemed to the matron and head-nurse, who occasionally pa.s.sed that way, as if both had been turned to stone, so fixed was their gaze, so rigid their bodies. But in reality neither had ever been more keenly alive. Each heart was reviewing with painful accuracy the two short years that had gone since the little band of orphans had come to live with them. How much had happened in that time, and how dearly they had come to love each one of the sisters!

"I could not care more for them if they were my own," whispered Mrs.

Campbell to herself.

"They are like my own flesh and blood," thought the President.

"I know a mother is not supposed to have favorites among her children,"

mused Mrs. Campbell, half guiltily, "but there is something about Peace which makes her seem just a little the dearest to me."

"They are all such lovable girls," the President told himself, "but somehow I can't help liking Peace a little the best. Everyone does. I wonder why."

So they sat there side by side in the great hospital and pondered, waiting for the verdict from the white room above them.

Suddenly Dr. Shumway stood before them. "It is all over," he began, smiling cheerfully. "She will--"

"All over," whispered Mrs. Campbell, and fainted quite away.

When she opened her eyes again, the young doctor was bending over her, chafing her hands, and she heard his remorseful voice saying, "My dear Mrs. Campbell, you misunderstood me. The operation was successful. The little one will live."

"Ah, yes, I know," sighed the woman. "But it was such a relief to know the ordeal was ended that I couldn't bear the joy of the news. I am all right now. When can we see our girl?"

Quickly the good news was flashed over the wires to the anxious hearts in Martindale, "Operation successful. Peace will walk again." And great was the rejoicing everywhere.

Only Peace herself seemed undisturbed, taking everything as a matter of course, obeying the nurse's orders, and asking no questions concerning her own welfare, though she asked enough about other people's affairs to make up, and soon became a source of unending amus.e.m.e.nt to the hospital attendants, who made every excuse imaginable to talk with this dear little, queer little patient in her room.

Peace was in her element. Nothing suited her quite so well as to make new friends, and she was delighted at the interest the busy nurses and doctors displayed in her case. "Why, Miss Wayne," she sighed ecstatically one day when she had been in the hospital for a month, "I know the name of every nurse and doctor in this building, and pretty near all the patients. The only trouble with them is they change so often I really can't get much acquainted before they go home. I'm just wild to get into that wheel-chair which Dr. d.i.c.k has promised me as soon as I get strong enough; for then I can go visiting the other sick folks, can't I? Dr. d.i.c.k says I can, and I'm crazy to see what they look like.

I can't tell very well from what the nurses say about their patients just what they look like. I try to 'magine while I'm lying here all day, but you know how 'tis,--the ones who have the prettiest names are as homely as sin usually; and the pretty ones have the homely names.

"There's the little lady down the hall who keeps sending me jelly and things she can't eat. The head nurse, Miss Gee,--ain't that an awful funny name? I call her Skew Gee, because her first name is Sue. Well, she told me that this lady has been in the hospital four years. _Four years!_ Think of it! And that she never says a cross word to anyone, but when the pain gets bad she sings until it's better. No wonder that man loved her and wanted to marry her even if she will always be an invalid."

"What do you know about love and marriage?" teased the nurse, laying out fresh linen and testing the water in a huge bowl by the bed.

"I know I'd have married her, too, if I'd been in his shoes. She must be a darling. I'm very anxious to see if she is pretty. Miss Gee says she is. She says that typhoid girl is pretty, too. The one who has been here ten weeks now and is still so sick. I don't s'pose they'd let me see her yet. She calls one of her legs Isaiah and the other Jeremiah, 'cause one of 'em doesn't bother her and the other does. Isaiah in the Bible told about the good things that were going to happen, and Jeremiah was always growling about the bad things that had happened. She must be a funny girl to figure all that out, don't you think? Then there are those two little girls in the Children's Ward,--the one with the hip disease that's been here two whole years, and the other that's got _pugnacious_ aenemia. I'd like awful well to see them, 'cause neither one has a mother. And there's the weenty, weenty woman with nervous _prospertation_, but I'm most p'ticularly interested in Billy Bolee.

"Nurse Redfern brought him in to see me a few minutes ago, while you were eating your breakfast. Isn't he the prettiest little fellow you ever saw, and hasn't he got the worst name? I don't see what his mother could be thinking about to call him that."

"But that isn't his real name, dear," answered the nurse, busy at making her talkative little patient comfortable for the day.

"Then why do they call him that?"

"Because we don't know his real name. His mother died here in the hospital weeks ago without telling us who she was or anything about her history. The baby talked nothing but Dutch, and though Dr. Kruger, of the hospital staff, is Dutch, he could not make out from the child's baby-talk what his name is."

"And so they picked out that horrid Billy-Bolee name," exclaimed Peace disgustedly.

"That was because he kept saying something which sounded like Billy Bolee. We didn't know what he meant, but began to refer to him in that manner, and the name stuck."

"Does he talk American now?"

"A little, but of course it is like learning to talk again, and we often have to get Dr. Kruger to interpret his wants even yet. I'll never forget one of the first nights he was here. He cried and cried until the whole staff of nurses was nearly frantic, because we could find nothing to soothe him. He kept repeating some strange words, as if he was trying to tell us what he wanted, but none of us understood. At that time we didn't even know his nationality, but while he was still howling l.u.s.tily, Dr. Kruger came upstairs on his evening round of calls, and he stopped to see what was the trouble with Miss Redfern's charge. Then how he laughed! Poor Billy Bolee was begging to be put in bed, and here we'd been trying for an hour to find out what was the matter."

Peace laughed heartily. "That was a good joke on the nurses, wasn't it?"

she remarked, when her merriment had subsided. "But why do you keep him here now if his mother is dead?"

"The doctors are endeavoring to cure his little foot so he can walk all right again. He was hurt in the same railroad accident which killed his mother, and the injury has made one leg shorter than the other."

"O," cried Peace in horror. "And he hasn't any relations to take care of him after he gets well?"

"Not that we know of."

"Then what will you do with him? He can't live here always, can he?"

"No. Some day he will have to be sent to a Children's Home or some such inst.i.tution where homeless waifs are cared for, until some kind heart adopts him."

"But no one wants _lame_ children to adopt," Peace protested. "Do you s'pose Billy Bolee will ever get adopted?"

"We _hope_ so."

Peace was silent a moment, then thoughtfully remarked, "There was a fat old hen in our church--there! I didn't mean to say fat, 'cause I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world,--but Mrs. Burns was fat, and she used to come over to our house after I got hurt and tell me how thankful I ought to be. It made me awful mad at first, but I b'lieve I know now what she meant. Now there's my Lilac Lady,--she had heaps of money, and a great, splendid house to live in, and Aunt Pen to take care of her; so even if she never could walk again, 'twasn't as bad as it would have been s'posing she was poor and didn't have anything of her own. Then there's me. If I had fallen off a roof in Parker and cracked my back, 'twould have been perfectly awful, 'cause there would have been no money for doctors and such like, and I guess it costs heaps to get operated on. But as it is now, I've got Grandpa and Grandma Campbell to take care of me, and there ain't any danger of my being sent to a Children's Home or the poor farm. There are a pile of thankfuls in this world, ain't there?"

"Yes indeed," answered the nurse warmly. "This world is a pretty good old world, and no matter what happens, there is always something left for every one to be thankful about. Isn't that so?"

"Uh-huh. That's what Papa used to tell us, and before every Thanksgiving dinner we had to think up some p'tic'lar big thankful that had happened to us that year. Even after he and Mamma had gone to Heaven, Gail made us do the same thing, and you'd be s'prised to see the things we dug up to be thankful about even if we were _orphants_, and poorer than mice. One year I managed to kill a turkey that b'longed to another man; so we had some meat for dinner when we hadn't really expected any. 'Twasn't often we got _turkey_, either,--not even when Papa was alive. But we always have it at Grandpa's on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm very fond of turkey, ain't you?"

"Yes, I am quite partial to Mr. Gobbler, too," smiled Miss Wayne reminiscently, "but we nurses don't always get a taste of it on Thanksgiving Day, either."

"Can't the hospital afford turkeys _once_ a year?" asked Peace in shocked surprise.