One instance of this whole-souled devotion and unstinting charity occurred on the third day and brought the tears to her eyes, not only then but whenever she thought of it in the after years.  A tiny mite of a baby, only a few weeks old was brought into the ward and laid in a cot not very far from Ida’s bed.  The nurses and the doctors crowded round it with eager attention.  It was watched day and night; if it cried, at the first note of the feeble wail, a couple of nurses flew to the cot, and, if necessary, a famous physician was telephoned for:  and came promptly and cheerfully.  The whole ward was wrapped up in the tiny mite, and Ida leant on her elbow and craned forward to get a glimpse of it; and felt towards it as she would have felt if it had been a little sick or wounded lamb in Herondale.

“What is the matter with it, poor little thing?” she asked the sister.

“The spine,” replied the sister, bending tenderly over the cot and taking the emaciated little paw in her comforting, ministering hand.

“Will it get well?” asked Ida, quite anxiously.

The sister shook her head.

“Lor’ bless me!” said Ida’s neighbour, pityingly.  “It ’ud be almost better if the pore little thing died!”

The sister looked up with mild surprise.

“Oh, yes; it can’t live longer than three weeks,” she said, as sadly as if she had not seen a score of similar cases.

Ida lay down, her eyes filled with tears, her heart filled with awe and wonder.  Perhaps for the first time in her life she understood what charity meant.  Here was a waif of the slums, doomed to die in so many weeks, and yet it was the object of the loving devotion of every nurse in the ward, with every comfort and luxury which an age of civilisation could supply, and the recipient of the enthusiastic attention of a great surgeon whose name was famous throughout the world.

The woman in the next bed was crying too.

“It makes you think of ’eaven, don’t it, miss,” she said, with a sniff.  “If I was rich I’d leave all my money to a ’orspital; that I would!”

The speech suddenly reminded Ida of her own poverty, of which she had not thought very much, for the need of money is not very keenly felt in a hospital ward, where everything is “free, gratis, for nothing.”  The time came when she was permitted to get up, and nothing could exceed her amazement on finding herself so weak that her legs trembled under her, and the walls and the floor seemed to rock and heave; but in a day or two she was able to walk a little, and she at once begged permission to help nurse the baby.  It was against the rules, but it was very difficult for anyone to resist Ida when she turned those great violet eyes upon them imploringly:  and much to her delight she was permitted to hover about the cot and assist in an unofficial way.  When the baby was asleep, which was not particularly often, Ida was permitted to read to some of the other patients; and, in fact, make herself generally useful in an unobtrusive fashion.