In the girls' ward there is the same freshness and cleanliness of the place and all its belongings, the same wonderful {109} patience and courageous endurance on the part of the baby inmates, which has been my wonder ever since we went in. Here is a mite of a girl sitting up in bed, holding a moist pad to her eye, her poor little head being all bandaged. She never utters a sound, but the little round face is set with a determined endurance. "What is she sitting up for?" She is "waiting to see muvver." Another little creature, who is suffering from abscesses in the neck, submits to have the painful place poulticed only on the condition that she shall decide, by keeping her hand upon the warm linseed-meal, when it is cool enough to put on. These are scarcely pleasant details, and there are sights here which are very, very sad, and make us shrink—but I honestly declare that they are redeemed from being repulsive because of the evidence of love that is to be witnessed,—the awakening of the tender sympathies and sweet responses of the childlike heart. But for its being Sunday—which involves another reason to be mentioned presently—the beds would be strewed with toys and picture-books, while a rocking-horse, which is a part of the hospital property, and a fit kind of steed to draw the "hospital-carriage," which is represented by a perambulator—would probably be saddled and taken out of the stable on the landing. On the topmost storey we come to the real infants, the little babies, one of whom is even now in the midst of his dinner, which he takes from a feeding-bottle, by the aid of an india-rubber tube conveniently traversing his pillow. Everywhere there are evidences of the care with which the work is carried on, and as we descend to the waiting-room again we have fresh proofs of the benefits that are being effected in the great district, by the provision made for the little creatures, many of whom would otherwise {110} be left to linger in pain and want. For the waiting-room is filled—filled with mothers and elder sisters and little brothers, tearfully eager and anxious for the weekly visit to the fifty children upstairs. Here is the secret of the brave little patient faces in the beds and cots above. It is infinitely touching to think how the prospect of "seeing muvver" sustains that chubby little sufferer,—how the expected visit nerves the stronger ones to endurance, and sends a fresh throb of life through those who are still too weak to do more than faintly smile, and hold out a thin pale hand.