She went back to the ward and sat beside Johnny. But that night she
went up on the roof again, and sat on the parapet. She could see,
across the courtyard, the dim rectangles of her ward, and around a
corner in plain view, "room Twenty-two." Its occupant was sitting at
the typewriter, and working hard. Or he seemed to be. It was too far
away to be sure. Jane Brown slid down onto the roof, which was not
very clean, and putting her elbows on the parapet, watched him for a
long time. When he got up, at last, and came to the open window, she
hardly breathed. However, he only stood there, looking toward her
but not seeing her.
Jane Brown put her head on the parapet that night and cried. She
thought she was crying about Johnny Fraser. She might have felt
somewhat comforted had she known that Twenty-two, being tired with
his day's work, had at last given way to most horrible jealousy of
the Senior Surgical Interne, and that his misery was to hers as five
is to one.
The first number of the _Quarantine Sentinel_ was a great success.
It served in the wards much the same purpose as the magazines
published in the trenches. It relieved the monotony, brought the
different wards together, furnished laughter and gossip. Twenty-two
wrote the editorials, published the paper, with the aid of a couple
of convalescents, and in his leisure drew cartoons. He drew very
well, but all his girls looked like Jane Brown. It caused a ripple
of talk.
The children from the children's ward distributed them, and went
back from the private rooms bearing tribute of flowers and fruit.
Twenty-two himself developed a most reprehensible habit of
concealing candy in the _Sentinel_ office and smuggling it to his
carriers. Altogether a new and neighbourly feeling seemed to
follow in the wake of the little paper. People who had sulked
in side-by-side rooms began, in the relaxed discipline of
convalescence, to pay little calls about. Crotchety dowagers knitted
socks for new babies. A wave of friendliness swept over every one,
and engulfed particularly Twenty-two.
In the glow of it he changed perceptibly. This was the first
popularity he had ever earned, and the first he had ever cared a
fi-penny bit about. And, because he valued it, he felt more and more
unworthy of it.
But it kept him from seeing Jane Brown. He was too busy for many
excursions to the ward, and when he went he was immediately the
centre of an animated group. He hardly ever saw her alone, and when
he did he began to suspect that she pretended duties that might have
waited.
One day he happened to go back while Doctor Willie was there, and
after that he understood her problem better.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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