Another silence settled over Ward C.

"Well--" said the House Surgeon, breaking it at last and sounding a trifle nervous. "Well--"

"I thought you said I wasn't to move or speak, or the spell would be broken?"

"That's right, excellent nurse--followed doctor's orders exactly." He was smiling radiantly now, only no one could see. Slowly he drew her hands away from her eyes and kissed the lids. "You can open them if you solemnly promise not to be disappointed when you see the Love-Talker has stepped into an ordinary house surgeon's uniform and looks like the--devil." With a laugh the House Surgeon gathered her close in his arms.

"The devil was only a rebelling angel," she murmured, contentedly.

"But I'm not rebelling. Bless those trustees! If they hadn't put us both out of the hospital we might be jogging along for the next ten years on the wholesome, easily digested diet of friendship, and never dreamed of the feast we were missing--like this--and this--and--"

Margaret MacLean buried her face in the uniform with a sob.

"What is it, dearest? Don't you like them?"

"I--love--them. Don't you understand? I never belonged to anybody before in all my life, so no one ever wanted to--"

The rest was unintelligible, but perfectly satisfactory to the House Surgeon. He held her even closer while she sobbed out the tears that had been intended for the edge of Bridget's bed; and when they were spent he wiped away all traces with some antiseptic gauze that happened to be in his pocket.

"I will never be foolish again and remember what lies behind to-night,"

said Margaret MacLean, knowing full well that she would be, and that often, because of the joy that would lie in remembering and comparing.

"Now tell me, did they make you go, too?"

"The President told me, very courteously, that he felt sure I would be wishing to find another position elsewhere better suited to my rising abilities; and if an opportunity should come--next month, perhaps--they would not wish in any way to interfere with my leaving."

"Ugh! I--"

"No, you don't, dearest. You couldn't expect them to want us around after the things we magnanimously refrained from saying--but so perfectly implied."

"All right, I'll love them instead, if you want me to, only--" And she puckered her forehead into deep furrows of perplexity. "I have kept it out of my mind all through the evening, but we might as well face it now as to-morrow morning. What is going to happen to us?"

The House Surgeon turned her about until she was again looking across the line of scattered blossoms--into the indistinguishable darkness beyond. He laughed joyously, as a man can laugh when everything lies before him and there are no regrets left behind. "Have you forgotten so soon? We are to cross the primrose ring--right here; and follow the road--there--into faeryland after the children."

"The beds really do look empty."

"They certainly do."

"And we'll find the children there?"

"Of course."

"And I'll not have to give them up?"

"Of course not."

"And we'll all be happy together--somewhere?"

"Yes, somewhere!"

She turned quickly and reached out her arms to him hungrily. "I know now why a maid always follows the Love-Talker when he comes a-wooing."

"Why, dearest?"

"Because he makes her believe in him and the country where he is taking her, and that's all a woman asks."

X

WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARD

Everybody woke with a start on the morning following the 30th of April; things began to happen even before the postman had made his first rounds. The operators at the telephone switchboards were rushed at an unconscionably early hour, considering that their station compa.s.sed the Avenue. The President was trying to get the trustees, Saint Margaret's, and the Senior Surgeon; the trustees were trying to get one another; while the Senior Surgeon was rapidly covering the distance between his home and the hospital--his mind busy with a mult.i.tude of things, none of which he had ever written with capitals.

Saint Margaret's was astir before its usual hour; there was a tang of joyousness in the air, and everybody's heart and mind, strangely enough, seemed to be in festal attire, although n.o.body was outwardly conscious of it. It was all the more inexplicable because Saint Margaret's had gone to bed miserable, and events naturally pointed toward depression: Margaret MacLean's coming departure, the abandoning of Ward C, the House Surgeon's resignation, and Michael's empty crib.

Ward C had wakened with a laugh. Margaret MacLean, who had been moving noiselessly about the room for some time, picking up the withered remains of the primrose ring, looked up with apprehension. The tears she had shed over Michael's crib were quite dry, and she had a brave little speech on the end of her tongue ready for the children's awakening. Eight pairs of sleepy eyes were rubbed open, and then unhesitatingly turned in the direction of the empty crib in the corner.

"Michael has gone away." she said, softly, steadying her voice with great care. "He has gone where he will be well--and his heart sound and strong."

She was wholly unprepared for the children's response. It was so unexpected, in fact, that for the moment she tottered perilously near the verge of hysterics. The children actually grinned; while Bridget remarked, with a chuckle:

"Ye are afther meanin' that he didn't come back--that's what!" And then she added, as an afterthought, "He said to tell ye 'G.o.d bless ye,'

Miss Peggie."

Margaret MacLean did not know whether to be shocked or glad that the pa.s.sing of a comrade had brought no sign of grief. Instead of being either, she went on picking up the primroses and wondering. As for the children, they lay back peacefully in their beds, their eyes laughing riotously. And every once in a while they would look over at one another, giving the funniest little expressive nods, which seemed to say: "I know what you're thinking about, and you know what I'm thinking about, so what's the need of talking. But when is it going to happen?"

The House Surgeon brought up her mail; it was an excuse to see her again before his official visit. "Are the children very much broken up over it?" he asked, anxiously, outside the door.

For answer Margaret MacLean beckoned him and pointed to the eight occupied cots--unquestionably serene and happy.

"Well, I'll be--" began the House Surgeon, retiring precipitously back to the door again; but the nurse put a silencing finger over his lips.

"Hush, dear! The children are probably clearer visioned than we are.

I have the distinct feeling this morning of being very blind and stupid, while they seem--oh, so wise."

The House Surgeon grunted expressively. "Well, perhaps they won't take your going away so dreadfully to heart--now; or theirs, for that matter."

"I hope not," and then she smiled wistfully. "But I thought you told me last night we were all going together? At any rate, I am not going to tell them anything. If it must be it must be, and I shall slip off quietly, when the children are napping, and leave the trustees to tell."

She looked her mail over casually; there were the usual number of advertis.e.m.e.nts, a letter from one of the nurses who had gone South, and another in an unfamiliar hand-writing. She tore off the corner of the last, and, running her finger down the flap, she commented:

"Looks like quality. A letter outside the profession is a very rare thing for me."

She read the letter through without a sound, and then she read it again, the House Surgeon watching, the old big-brother look gone for ever from his face, and in its place a worshipful proprietorship. The effect of the letter was undeniably Aprilish; she looked up at the House Surgeon with the most radiant of smiles, while her eyes spilled recklessly over.

"How did you know it? How did you know it?" she repeated.

He was trying his best to find out what it was all about when one of the nurses came hurrying down the corridor.