"Tell an old one," said the boy. "Any old story," he added with a grim smile under the crisscross bandages of the stiff face. "Tell about the little red hen," piped a voice from the next bed. "No--about billy-goat," from across the room. "Tell about the old lady that runned away," came shrilling close at hand. Aunt Jane put her hands over her ears. "I can't hear anything," she announced. Their faces grew still and alert till she should move her hands a tiny crack and they could shout again: "Billy-goat!" "The little red hen!" "The lady that runned away!" Jimmie Sullivan, half leaning against her, looked at them reproachfully. "She can't tell nuthin' while you make such a racket!" he said. "She likes it!--She likes it!--_She_ don't care!" They returned. Aunt Jane looked at them and smiled. She took down her hands. "Let me see--" She glanced from one bed to the other. "I am going to let Edna choose.... She can whisper it to me." She went to a bed across the room, Jimmie Sullivan's frame-leg clanking happily beside her, and bent to the pillow. The girl lifted a thin arm and threw it about Aunt Jane's neck to draw her close. Aunt Jane listened and lifted her head and smiled. "All right," she announced. The room was so still you could hear a pin drop. A nurse passing the lower end of the ward, with a dish in her hand, paused and looked down the quiet room. Every eye was fastened expectantly on the motherly figure moving serenely about.... It crossed to the side of the room and adjusted the skylight shade and brought a big rocker and placed it in the middle of the room under the skylight and put a low chair for Jimmie Sullivan, and another beside it for the child that was limping slowly across to her.... A girl in a wheeled chair propelled herself swiftly down the ward and came to a stop as close to the big rocker as she could get. Aunt Jane glanced slowly about the ward--at the expectant faces looking at her from every bed. "Now, the rest of you stay where you are!" she said severely. They laughed and adjusted themselves, and then they were quiet again, watching her intently. She sat down in the big chair and rocked a little. "Let me see--" She sat smiling thoughtfully; the smile ran along the pillows--waiting. "Once when I was a little girl----" The pillows nestled a little and sighed happily and settled down; and Aunt Jane's voice went on with the tale and the nurse at the end of the ward passed out with her dish. The door swung to behind her. The great sunny room was left to happiness and to Aunt Jane and to the children and: "Once when I was a little girl." XI