Next day he went, as he felt it his duty to do, to the hospital to inquire for the child; and in the waiting-room he found to his wonder and delight the Perugino herself, waiting meekly for news, but accompanied by a somewhat grim personage who would have been the lay-sister of a Roman Catholic sisterhood, but whom Oswald did not know (nor do I) how to classify in the spick and span new conventual system of Anglicanism. She kept apart with humility, but she kept her eye from under the poke-bonnet fixed upon the young lady whom she attended, so that Oswald was able to exchange only a few words with her. The little girl had her leg broken; which was very serious; but she had passed a good night and was going on well; which was more cheerful and restored the smiles to the young faces of the inquirers, to whom it was further intimated that on a certain day her friends might be admitted to see the little patient. ‘Oh, thanks! I will come,’ cried Agnes; and then she explained, with a blush, that poor little Emmy was an orphan and had no friends out of the ‘House.’ ‘But everybody is fond of her there,’ she added. Perhaps it was the coming in of some new feeling into his mind that made Oswald as effusive and sympathetic as his mother herself could have been. ‘Then God bless the House,’ he said, ‘for taking such care of the friendless.’ Agnes looked at him gratefully with humid eyes. ‘Then you are not one of the people who disapprove of it?’ she said. ‘Indeed, they do things there we could not do staying at home.’ ‘Ah,’ said Oswald, with a smile, ‘I can see you are wanted to stay at home--and I don’t wonder.’ The girl shrank back a little. ‘I am not a Sister,’ she said, with youthful dignity. ‘I am not good enough. I only teach. We must go back now.’