"The whole affair shall be stopped at once!" The Matron's voice was full of decision and very stern. "I will send for Hudson and tell her I cannot keep her here any longer. Nor will I sign her certificate! I am not justified, after all you tell me, in sending her away to pass herself off as a qualified nurse." "You take a harder view of her conduct than I do, Matron." And Sister Warwick then and there began to plead for the nurse who had been such a "thorn in her side." "You will not move me, Sister! Hudson will go! It will seem right, from many points of view, when you can look at it dispassionately. I am only very thankful that we so rarely have such a failure among the nurses, and thankful most of all that no worse harm has been done. We might have had a case for the coroner." Sister Warwick knew the Matron's words were just. She left her and went back to her own room, sinking into her leaning-chair with the consciousness that an upset like this "took it out of her" far more than even an operation involving pain and suffering to one of her dear ward babies. And, sad at heart, she began to think of Ellen Hudson's future, then to search back in her own mind for possible opportunities missed in the past when she might have helped her more kindly. She realised bitterly that she herself might have done better too. She sat forward then and wrote a little note and sent it round to the Nurses' Home, timed to reach Nurse Hudson just after her interview with the Matron. It was to ask her staff-nurse to come and see her before she left. But she never came. She passed out of Sister Warwick's life from that hour, and her place knew her no more. * * * * * Nurse Carden's bright face and ready sympathy were a pleasant interruption to the Sister's mournful ruminations that evening. She came in a little before her usual time, and the two had a quiet chat in the "Sisters' Room" before the night work began. Here Sister Cumberland joined them. These three women--so different in character, so united in aim and purpose--felt then the sustaining power of a friendship that was standing the wear and tear of life. Seeing how worried the elder "Sister" was by the present, the other two drew her thoughts back to the past and to their earlier experiences in the ward. "Do you remember?" was the introduction to many reminiscences Sister Cumberland recalled that night on duty, when she fought her fiercest fight with the craving for sleep. Nurse Carden talked of Tommie the waif and his whimsical ways. He could not be forgotten, for it was not many days since at the lodge-gate of her own home she had seen the Tommie of to-day. Such a contrast! A sturdy, ruddy, honest country lad, loving his life as a gardener's boy, and always ready, if questioned, to say, "Oh, I belong to Nurse Carden, I do! I ain't got nobody else! But she is good to me, she is!"