The first thing he wished to have altered when they stopped in front of it, inside the park, was that several beautiful old trees, that were too close to it, should be taken away. The hospital was a two-storied house, painted yellow, with exceptionally large windows, but very small panes. The ground floor of the building was brick and contained the servants' rooms and offices; it all looked very snug, with curtains in the windows and plenty of flowers standing in them. The entrance was at the left side of the house; and there was a very large yard railed in by a high fence. Kallem was pleased to see a row of shady trees by the paling; he knew that in about a fortnight he would have some American tents there for the use of the patients in summer-time. The door was open, but no porter (concierge) to be seen; in the window there were religious books and tracts for sale. There was no notice put on the door to say when the patients might receive visits. Presently they saw the porter in the inner yard; he was an elderly man with a searching, solemn eye; he had spectacles on, but looked over the top of them and took them off directly he had taken in who it was. "Are you the new doctor?" "Yes." Then he took off his hat too. "Welcome!" The patient he had been talking to crept on before them; he was pale and had a thick woollen scarf round his neck, even on that warm day; he kept at a distance and did not bow. The porter accompanied them. In the hospital there was a suite of rooms on each side of a light and airy corridor, those to the front were large and those to the yard were small, both stories were built in the same way. The porter was not only porter, but he was also steward, and the oldest inspector the house had; he therefore felt called upon to introduce the other members of the household one by one as they met them. They were all respectable-looking people, both men and women; there were two deaconesses among the latter, and they seemed the pleasantest of them all. The first thing Kallem intended to do was to do away with the old-established typhus-fever rooms, and to build a separate typhus-pavilion for winter use. The operating-room was very light, but there must at once be a new polished floor put in. The ventilating apparatus was most faulty. With the exception of these and a few minor drawbacks--such as the small windowpanes--it was a capital house, high rooms and roomy passages, and generally airy; altogether he was well pleased.