When Annie re-entered the hospital colder and 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 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 _eclat_ 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.