A month or so later she was appointed superintendent of the boys’ hospital, a post of peculiar responsibility and difficulty.  It was one, too, from which she shrank, holding the mistaken idea that she possessed no powers of government.  Certainly it was a position to tax the patience, for the children were not too ill to be noisy and disobedient, or even sometimes to unite in open rebellion, while the task was not rendered easier by the necessity of speaking in a foreign tongue.

Altogether she had a very busy life.  She rose at 5.O A.M. every day, and kept hard at work, with the exception of the intervals for meals and the Stille Stunde (quiet hour), until night.  “The cleaning and keeping my dominion in order is such a business,” she writes.  “Sweeping and washing the floor of the three rooms every morning, two stoves which must be black-leaded weekly, each taking an hour, weekly cleaning of windows, tins, dinner-chests, washing-up of bandages, &c., besides the washing-up after each of our five meals, keeps one busy.”  She must have been strong in those days, for she wrote:—­“I come over from the other house every morning at six, the ground white and windows frozen over; often at three in the afternoon the water outside is still frozen, yet night or morning I never put on bonnet or handkerchief, unless when I go out for a walk.”

From the first the hospital patients with their varied needs were a great interest to her.  Now it is a dying man, beside whom she has to watch, longing to minister words of comfort, yet unable to do so, fearing that her then want of fluency in the language might trouble him in his weakness.  Yet as she heard the poor man’s cry, “Lieber Heiland, hilf mir” (Dear Saviour, help me), her prayers, too, rose for him to the compassionate Saviour.  Now it is a little boy with a bad back, terrible sores, and a racking cough, who would let no one else touch him.  “Every night,” she says, “I used to pray with Otto after they were all in bed, and he used to put his poor little arm round my neck as I knelt beside him; but last night (the night before he died) he said of himself, ’I will only now pray that Jesus may take me to heaven, and that I may soon die,’ and as I had put my face near him to hear, he said, ’Lay your cheek on mine, it does me so much good.’”

We have seen quite enough of Agnes Jones by this time to know that she never shrank from a duty, however repulsive.  Her love for her Master, and her desire to serve others for His sake, preserved her from any fastidiousness.  In spite of her sensitive and sympathetic nature she could bear to witness the most painful operations without flinching, for she kept before her mind the ultimate good which would accrue from the present suffering.