Some of them didn’t need to go to the hospital at all—­they’re the best off, I think.  We got talkin’ to the people around us—­they are there from all over the country, with all kinds of diseases, poor people.  Well, there was a man from Kansas City who had been waitin’ a week, but had got up now second to the end, and I noticed him lookin’ at Annie.  I was fannin’ her and tryin’ to keep her cheered up.  Her face was a bad color from the pain she was in, and what did this man do but git up and come down to us and tell Annie that she could have his place.  He said he wasn’t in very bad pain now, and he would take her place.  He made very little of it, but it meant a lot to us, and to him, too, poor fellow.  Annie didn’t want to do it, but he insisted.  Sick folks know how to be kind to sick folks, I tell you.”

The dawn began to show blue behind the frost ferns on the window and the lamps overhead looked pale and sickly in the grey light.

“Annie had her operation on Monday,” she went on after a long pause.  “She was lookin’ every day for a letter from Dave, and when the doctor told her they would operate on her on Monday morning early, she asked him if he would mind putting it off until noon.  She thought there would be a letter from Dave, for sure, on that morning’s mail.  The doctor was very kind to her—­they understand a lot, them Mayos—­and he did put it off.  In the ward with Annie there was a little woman from Saskatchewan, that was a very bad case.  She talked to us a lot about her man and her four children.  She had a real good man by what she said.  They were on a homestead near Quill Lake, and she was so sure she’d get well.  The doctor was very hopeful of Annie, and said she had nine chances out of ten of getting better, but this little woman’s was a worse case.  Dr. Will Mayo told her she had just one chance in ten—–­but, dear me, she was a brave woman; she spoke right up quick, and says she, ’That’s all I want; I’ll get well if I’ve only half a chance.  I’ve got to; Jim and the children can’t do without me.’  Jim was her man.  When they came to take her out into the operating room they couldn’t give her ether, some way.  She grabbed the doctor’s hand, and says she, kind of chokin’ up, all at once, ‘You’ll do your best for Jim’s sake, won’t you?’ and he says, says he, ‘My dear woman, I’ll do my best for your sake.’  Busy and all as they are, they’re the kindest men in the world, and just before they began to operate the nurse brought her a letter from Jim and read it to her, and she held it in her hand through it all, and when they wheeled her back into the ward after the operation, it was still in her hand, though she had fainted dead away.”

“Did Annie get her letter?” I asked her.

My companion did not answer at once, but I knew very well that the letter had not come.