The work was terribly severe to any one unaccustomed to it. In her ward were women and girls only, who were easier to manage than the men, but who were more hopeless and apathetic, and Jeannie often thought that she would sooner have them fretful and irritable if they only would be less despondent. One woman, who was having the attack very slightly, and getting through with it very well, would spend half the day in sulky tears, pitying herself, and moaning over the cruelty of Jeannie, who, in obedience to her orders, did not, of course, let her have a crumb of any solid food. Sometimes when she was giving her a wash in the morning she would be called away by another trying to raise herself in bed or wanting to be attended to in some way, and when she came back there would be nothing but querulous complaints of the time she had been left; she felt sure she would catch a cold; Jeannie had not dried her properly before she went. At another time she would beg for food with tears, saying how she had read a story in which was described an epidemic of typhoid, where a charitable lady in the village had sat by her patients and fed them with cooling fruits. Jeannie had laughed at this, out of the superiority of her ten days’ knowledge. “My good woman,” she said, “if I wanted to kill you I should give you a cooling fruit.” “You are killing me with starvation,” cried the woman. “Look how thin I have grown with a fortnight of this. Oh, for God’s sake, Miss, give me just a crust of bread!” Jeannie had finished washing her, and covered her up gently. “Now I am leaving you, and I shall come again to you in two hours with your milk,” she said. “Look, you have two hours before you. Just say your prayers, and thank God for getting over this. And ask Him to make you more sensible and more patient. You are more trouble than all the rest of the ward put together.” Jeannie took down the woman’s temperature-chart, which hung over her bed, and put down the ten o’clock register. “You are doing very well,” she said. “Just think over what I have said.”