"Ah! I wish I could be brave, and fearless, and thoughtless like you, Susan." "Do you?" cried Susan. "Perhaps I, too, have a skeleton hidden away in a cupboard, somewhere, my girl. You always see me jolly. Yes! if it were not for one horrid thing"--she spoke slowly and shivered--"I should be perfectly happy." "What is that?" asked Mary, wondering what possible secret sorrow could be a constant bugbear to this frivolous being. "The fear of old age, Mary," was the reply. "The dread of being old, ugly--like withered Sister Jane, for instance. Oh! how I fear that loathsome thing." The woman's face actually blanched as she spoke these words, and her accents betrayed an emotion that surprised Mary. Yes! this indeed was the one phantom that ever pursued this butterfly creature. This terror that possessed her was ever present to her, as happens sometimes to such natures. To be no longer beautiful, to be no longer sighed after by men, was to her imagination terrible as is the thought of hell to some. "Let us sit down on this seat and rest a little, Susan," suggested Mary. "Very well; but it's getting late, and my time will soon be up. Ah! I wish I was like you, Mary, living at home with that amiable old Catherine King, instead of being boxed up with a lot of foolish women in that hospital, with strict discipline about being out at nights and so on. I must say I like my liberty: but luckily this won't be for long." "I never could make out how they allowed the rules to be broken through in my case," Mary said. "There was another nurse who wanted to live with her mother. But she was told they would not have her in the hospital unless she lived there altogether, as the rest do." "The King has great influence in all directions. She must be very fond of you, must the King--your aunt as she calls herself now. Ah! I wish she would adopt me and take me out of this hateful place. I would make her a most dutiful niece." "Yet, most of the nurses seem to be well contented with their home," urged Mary. "Oh! it's nice enough for those women--innocent creatures--they have never known the delights of sin and liberty. I'm not like them--like Miss Anerly for instance. She's fun, isn't she? They have put her to sleep in the same room as I do. She is always at me about saying my prayers. She kneels down for half an hour at least, before getting into bed, and when she gets up, she has a sort of way of looking at me with a superior see-how-much-better-I-am-than-you air, that is sickening. I often feel tempted to bring out some remarks that will make her open her weak, little, grey eyes; but of course that won't do. What do you think; she insists on reading a chapter in the Bible to me every morning before I get up."