"That's natural enough-- You see how nice Jimmie gets around on your leg? Come here, Jimmie, and make your manners to Mr. Herman." Jimmie came up proudly, hardly limping at all as he approached the man sitting in the big chair. He stood very straight on his frame leg, his hands in his pockets, and looked him in the eye. "I thank you for my leg!" he said. "It's fine!" "You are welcome." Medfield was smiling. "Show him how it walks, Jimmie." Jimmie strutted off, swinging it proudly. "You see--it hardly shows at all!" she said, as they watched him cross the room. "And the older he gets, the better he'll manage. You've made a man of him!" She beamed approval on Medfield and on Jimmie and the frame leg and on the whole ward. Medfield, leaning back in his chair, smiled at her whimsically. "You spoil everybody!" he said. She ignored it. "You sit there and rest a spell--till I'm ready to go." She moved to a bed near by and leaned over to the child and said something. The girl put up a quick hand and listened and glanced at the man in the big chair and nodded happily. "That's him!" said Aunt Jane looking back to the child and smiling as she went to the next bed. "We like your flowers, Mr. Herman." The child was speaking softly to him. Medfield started and turned. "We like them very much!" said the child, regarding him gravely. "Yes, we do like them!" came from the next bed. "We like them!" "We do like them!" The call was from farther off. "They're fine, you know!" It came from all sides now! Medfield glanced from one to the other, a little bewildered and touched. "We like Mr. Herman's flowers!" they called out. "I told you they liked 'em," said Aunt Jane. She had come back and was standing smiling at the children. "I thought you'd just like to see how it was yourself!" "You have them well trained!" replied Medfield, "--all but the name," he added. "The name doesn't matter--I thought you'd like it better?" "I do!" He got up, half embarrassed. "I'd better hide somewhere! I never had such an ovation--for a few flowers!" He turned toward the balcony that opened from the side of the room--with its flower-boxes, and the striped awning covering it from the sun. He stepped out into the balcony. Below him were the roofs of houses; and the city stretched away in the distance to a sunny haze. XXXIX Medfield looked back into the ward. The children had returned to their picture-books and toys. They were not thinking of Mr. Herman any more. The quiet look had returned to the room. "That was very pretty," he said. "Thank you!" His eyes were gentle, and a little moist, as they met hers for a moment. "Don't thank me!" said Aunt Jane hastily. "I didn't do anything!" "Didn't you tell them to do it?" "I didn't tell them anything, except that you were Mr. Herman. They did the rest themselves.... Children generally do things--nice things, if you let 'em alone--and don't meddle too much."