After she joined the Sisterhood, Sister Dora, as she was now called, had to work very hard. The Sisters did all the work of the house, and Sister Dora cleaned floors and grates, swept and dusted, and for a time acted as cook. She sometimes felt it very hard to have to do all this work. Once when a gentleman whom she knew came into the kitchen where she was peeling potatoes, she pulled her hood over her face so that he might not see her. In after life she found the great advantage of having learnt how to do all the work of a house herself. She thought some of the rules very strict; but still she was very happy there, and the Sisters loved her. She was able also to learn more about nursing, as the Sisters had a Cottage Hospital near Middlesborough, to which she was sent. Sometimes, too, she was sent to nurse private patients, and sometimes to nurse in another Cottage Hospital for accidents at Walsall, which was managed by the Coatham Sisters. At last Sister Dora settled altogether at Walsall, in charge of the little hospital there. Walsall is a great manufacturing centre, with coal pits, blast furnaces, and many kinds of factories. It had then no large hospital; the little Cottage Hospital was chiefly intended for accidents, and the patients were for the most part men and boys from the pits and workshops. There were also a large number of out-patients, men, women, and children. As most of the cases were accidents, Sister Dora was particularly anxious to become a good surgical nurse, and the chief surgeon at the hospital, when he saw how quick and clever she was, taught her all that he could, so that she could attend to many cases herself without the help of the doctor. The hospital in which she at first nursed was very small and inconvenient, with only fourteen beds, but a few years after Sister Dora settled in Walsall a new hospital was built on the top of the hill on which the town lies. It had twenty-eight beds, conveniently arranged in three wards, so that it was just possible for an active woman like Sister Dora to do all the nursing herself. She had the help of an old servant of her family, who came to live with her and who soon learnt to be a very capable nurse herself. Other women were engaged to sit up at night with the patients, and, later, Sister Dora used to have lady pupils who learnt nursing under her.