"One thing, ma'am, as pleased her was some dirty old lace one of the lidies brought for her one afternoon. She was just as 'appy as most females are with a babby, a-fingering of it and calling it all manner of queer names. There isn't a sight of old lace knocking about 'ere," and her one eye twinkled merrily; "I guess we lidies willed it all away to our h'ancestry afore seeking retirement. Our gowns aren't hexactly trimmed with priceless guipure, though there's some fine 'and embroidery on my h'apern," and she thrust the coarsely darned linen between the delicate fingers. "Garn!--they're always a-kiddin' of me. Yes, ma'am, I love to feel real lace; I can still tell them all by the touch--Brussels and Chantilly and Honiton and rose-point; it reminds me of the lovely things I used to mend up for the ladies to go to see the Queen in." They showed me her needlework--handkerchiefs and dusters hemmed with much accuracy, and knitting more even than that of many of us who can see. As I rose to go she took my finger and laid it upon the cabalistic signs of the "Book." "Don't you understand it? That's my own text, as I reads when things are worse than general: 'Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' Yes, there'll be glory for me--glory for me--glory for me." I heard the shrill, hoarse voice piping out the old revival hymn, very much out of tune, as I passed down the ward. I had a nasty lump in my throat when I got back to the Board Room, and I can't exactly remember what I said to the Committee. I think I cleared Nurse Smith from any definite charge of cruelty, something after the fashion of the Irish jurymen: "Not guilty, but don't do it again," adding the rider that Mary Grant was blind and deaf, and if she grumbled it was not surprising. It is possible my report was incoherent and subversive of discipline, and my feelings were not hurt because it was neither "received," nor "adopted," nor "embodied," nor "filed for future reference," but, metaphorically speaking, "lay on the table" to all eternity. "AND, BEHOLD, THE BABE WEPT" And, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion upon him. The night-porter sat in his lodge at 1 a.m., trying hard to keep off the sleep that weighed his eyelids down--that heavy sleep that all night-watchers know when nothing in the world seems worth a longer vigil. But the man before him had been dismissed for sleeping on duty, and our night-porter had had six months out of work, so, with resolute determination, he dragged up his leaden limbs and began to pace the corridors towards the Mental Ward, where he knew the screams of the insane were generally to be relied upon to keep sleep away from any one in the neighbourhood. To-night all was quiet, and it was with a brief prayer of thanksgiving that he heard the insistent note of the electric bell, and rushed to answer it, the lethargy leaving him under the necessity of action.