The Primrose Ring Part 3

Next came Sandy--merry of heart--a humpback laddie from Aberdeen. His parents had gone down with the steerage of a great ocean liner, and society had cared for him until the first horror of the tragedy had pa.s.sed; then some one fortunately had mentioned Saint Margaret's, and society was relieved of its burden. In the year he had spent here his Aberdonian burr had softened somewhat and a number of American colloquialisms had crept into his speech; but for all that he was "the braw canny Scot"--as the House Surgeon always termed him--and he objected to kisses. So the good-morning greeting was a hearty hand-shake between the two--comrade fas.h.i.+on.

"It wad be a bonnie day i' Aberdeen," he reminded her, blithely. "But 'tis no the robins there 'at wad be singin'."

"Shall I guess?"

"Na, I'll tell ye. Laverocks!"

"Really, Sandy?" And then she suddenly remembered something. "Now you guess what you're going to have for supper to-night."

"Porridge?"

"No; scones!"

"Bully!" And Sandy clapped his hands ecstatically.

Beside Sandy lay Susan--smart, shrewd, and American, with braced legs and back, and a philosophy that failed her only on Trustee Days. But as calendars are not kept in Ward C no one knew what this day was; and consequently Susan was grinning all over her pinched, gnome-like little face. Margaret MacLean kissed her on both cheeks; the Susan-kind hunger for affection, but the world rarely finds it out and therefore gives sparingly.

"Guess yer couldn't guess what I dreamt last night, Miss Peggie?"

"About the aunt?" This was a mythical relation of Susan's who lived somewhere and who was supposed to turn up some day and claim Susan with open arms. She was the source of many dreams and of much interested conversation and heated argument in the ward, and the children had her pictured down to the smallest detail of person and clothes.

"No, 'tain't my aunt this time. I dreamt you was gettin' married, Miss Peggie." And Susan giggled delightedly.

"An' goin' away?" This was groaned out in chorus from the two cots following Susan's, wherein lay James and John--fellow-Apostles of pain--bound closely together in that spiritual brotherhood. They were sitting up, holding hands and staring at Margaret with wide, anguish-filled eyes.

"Of course I'm not going away, little brothers; and I'm not going to get married. Does any one ever get married in Saint Margaret's?"

The Apostles thought very hard about it for a moment; but as it had never happened before, of course it never would now, and Miss Peggie was safe.

The whole ward smiled again. But in that moment Margaret MacLean remembered what the House Surgeon had said, and wondered. Was she building up for them an ultimate discontent in trying to make life happy and full for them now? Could not minds like theirs be taught to walk alone, after all? And then she laughed to herself for worrying.

Why should the children ever have to do without her--unless--unless something came to them far better--like Susan's mythical aunt? The children need never leave Saint Margaret's as long as they lived, and she never should; and she pa.s.sed on to the next cot, content that all was well.

As she stooped over the bed a pair of thin little arms flew out and clasped themselves tightly about her neck; a head with a shock of red curls buried itself in the folds of the gray uniform. This was Bridget--daughter of the Irish sod, oldest of the ward, general caretaker and best beloved; although it should be added in justice to both Bridget and Margaret MacLean that the former had no consciousness of it, and the latter took great care to hide it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: As she stooped over the bed a pair of thin little arms flew out and clasped themselves tightly about her neck.]

It was Bridget who read to the others when no one else could; it was Bridget who remembered some wonderful story to tell on those days when Sandy's back was particularly bad or the Apostles grew over-despondent; and it was Bridget who laughed and sang on the gray days when the sun refused to be cheery. Undoubtedly it was because of all these things that her cot was in the center of Ward C.

Concerning Bridget herself, hers was a case of a.r.s.enical poisoning, slowly absorbed while winding daisy-stems for an East Broadway manufacturer of cheap artificial flowers. She had done this for three years--since she was five--thereby helping her mother to support themselves and two younger children. She was ten now and the Senior Surgeon had already reckoned her days.

In the shadow of Bridget's cot was Rosita's crib--Rosita being the youngest, the most sensitive, and the most given to homesickness. This last was undoubtedly due to the fact that she was the only child in the incurable ward blessed in the matter of a home. Her parents were honest-working Italians who adored her, but who were too ignorant and indulgent to keep her alive. They came every Sunday, and sat out the allotted time for visitors beside her crib, while the other children watched in a silent, hungry-eyed fas.h.i.+on.

Margaret MacLean pa.s.sed her with a kiss and went on to Peter--Peter--seven years old--congenital hip disease--and all boy.

"h.e.l.lo, you!" he shouted, squirming under the kiss that he would not have missed for anything.

"h.e.l.lo, you!" answered back the administering nurse, and then she asked, solemnly, "How's Toby?"

"He's--he's fine. That soap the House Surgeon give me cured his fleas all up."

Toby was even more mythical than Susan's aunt; she was based on certain authentic facts, whereas Toby was solely the creation of a dog-adoring little brain. But no one was ever inconsiderate enough to hint at his airy fabrication; and Margaret MacLean always inquired after him every morning with the same interest that she bestowed on the other occupants of Ward C.

Last in the ward came Michael, a diminutive Russian exile with valvular heart trouble and a most atrocious vocabulary. The one seemed as incurable as the other. Margaret MacLean had wrestled with the vocabulary on memorable occasions--to no avail; and although she had long since discovered it was a matter of words and not meanings with him, it troubled her none the less. And because Michael came the nearest to being the black sheep of this sanitary fold she showed for him always an unfailing gentleness.

"Good morning, dear," she said, running her fingers through the perpendicular curls that bristled continuously.

"Goot mornun, tear," he mimicked, mischievously; and then he added, with an irresistible smile, "Und Got-tam-you."

"Oh, Michael, don't you remember, the next time you were going to say 'G.o.d bless you'?"

"Awright--next time."

Margaret MacLean sighed unconsciously. Michael's "next time" was about as reliable as the South American _manana_; and he seemed as much an alien now as the day he was brought into the ward. And then, because she believed that kindness was the strongest weapon for victory in the end, she did the thing Michael loved best.

Ward C was turned into a circus menagerie, and Margaret MacLean and her a.s.sistant were turned into keepers. Together they set about the duties for the day with great good-humor. Two seals, a wriggling hippopotamus, a roaring polar bear, a sea-serpent of surprising activities, two teeth-grinding alligators, a walrus, and a baby elephant were bathed with considerable difficulty and excitement. It was Sandy who insisted on being the elephant in spite of a heated argument from the other animals that, having a hump, he ought to be a camel. They forgave him later, however, when he squirted forth his tooth-brush water and trumpeted triumphantly, thereby causing the entire menagerie to squirm about and bellow in great glee.

At this point the head keeper had to turn them all back instantly into children, and she delivered a firm but gentle lecture on the inconsiderateness of soaking a freshly changed bed.

Sandy broke into penitent tears; and because tears were never allowed to dampen the atmosphere of Ward C when they could possibly be dammed, Margaret MacLean did the "best-of-all-things." She pushed the cribs and cots all together into a "special" with observation-cars; then, changing into an engineer, and with a call to Toby to jump aboard, she swung herself into the caboose-rocker and opened the throttle. The bell rang; the whistle tooted; and the engine gave a final snort and puff, bounding away countryward where spring had come.

Those of you who live where you can always look out on pleasant places, or who can travel at will into them, may find it hard to understand how wearisome and stupid it grows to be always in one room with an encompa.s.sing sky-line of roof-tops and chimneys, or may fail to sound the full depths of wonder and delight over the ride that Ward C took that memorable day.

The engineer pointed out everything--meadows full of flowers, trees full of birds, gardens new planted, and corn-fields guarded by scarecrows. She slowed up at the barnyards that the children might hear the crowing c.o.c.ks and clucking hens with their new-hatched broods, and see the neighboring pastures with their flocks of sheep and tiny lambs.

"A ken them weel--hoo the wee creepits bleeted hame i' Aberdeen!"

shouted Sandy, bleeting for the whole pastureful.

And when they came to the smallest of mountain brooks the engineer followed it, down, down, until it had grown into a stream with cowslipped banks; and on and on until it had grown into a river with little boats and sandy sh.o.r.e and leaping fish. Here the engineer stopped the train; and every one who wanted to--and there were none who did not--went paddling; and some went splas.h.i.+ng about just as if they could swim.

Back in the "special," they climbed a hilltop, slowly, so that the engineer could point out each farm and pasture and stream in miniature that they had seen close by.

"That's the wonder of a hilltop," she explained; "you can see everything neighboring each other." And when they reached the crest she clapped her hands. "Oh, children dear, wouldn't it be beautiful to build a house on a hilltop just like this to live in always!"

Afterward they rode into deep woods, where the sunlight came down through the trees like splashes of gold; and here the engineer suggested they should have a picnic.

As Margaret MacLean stepped out into the hall to look up the dinner-trays she met the House Surgeon.

"Dreading it as much as usual?" he asked, in the teasing, big-brother tone; but he looked at her in quite another way.

She laughed. "I'm hoping it isn't going to be as bad as the time before--and the time before that--and the time before that." She pushed back some moist curls that had slipped out from under her cap--engineering was hard work--and the little-girl look came into her face. She looked up mischievously at the House Surgeon. "You couldn't possibly guess what I've been doing all morning."

The House Surgeon wrinkled his forehead in his most professional manner. "Precautionary disinfecting?"

Margaret MacLean laughed again. "That's an awfully good guess, but it's wrong. I've been administering ant.i.toxin for trusteria."

In spite of her gay a.s.surance before the House Surgeon, however, it was rather a sober nurse in charge of Ward C who sat down that afternoon with a book of faery-tales on her knee open to the story of "The Steadfast Tin Soldier." As for Ward C, it was supremely happy; its beloved "Miss Peggie" was on duty for the afternoon with the favorite book for company; moreover, no one had discovered as yet that this was Trustee Day and that the trustees themselves were already near at hand.

A shadow fell athwart the threshold that very moment. Margaret MacLean could feel it without taking her eyes from the book, and, purposefully unmindful of its presence, she kept reading steadily on: