After a time she went to sit down on the top step of the hospital entrance to wait.  She contemplated with exquisite enjoyment the vigorous, profane, hair-pulling quarrel between two dirty little savages across the street.  She could have kissed her hand to the loud-voiced woman who came scuffling to the window to scold them, clutching a dirty kimono together over a Hogarth-like expanse of bosom.  They were well, these people, blood ran in their veins, their skin was whole, they breathed air, not iodoform!  Her mother had pulled the string too tight, and Sylvia’s ears were full of the ugly twang of its snapping.

When, at last, Judith and Mrs. Marshall came out, hand-in-hand, Sylvia sprang up to say:  “What an awful place!  I hope I’ll never have to set foot in one again!” But quick as was her impulse to speech, her perceptions were quicker, and before the pale exaltation of the other two, she fell silent, irritated, rebellious, thoroughly alien.  They walked along in silence.  Then Judith said, stammering a little with emotion, “M-M-Mother, I want to b-b-b-be a trained n-n-nurse when I grow up.”

CHAPTER XIII

AN INSTRUMENT IN TUNE

As they drew near to their boarding-house late that afternoon, very hot, very crumpled, very solemn, and very much out of tune with one another, they were astonished to see a little eager-faced boy dash out of the house and run wildly to meet them, shouting as he came.

“Why, Lawrence Marshall!” cried his mother, picking him up in strong arms; “how ever in the world did you get here!”

“Father brungded me,” cried the child, clasping her tightly around the neck.  “We got so lonesome for Mother we couldn’t wait.”

And then Sylvia had stamped on her mind a picture which was to come back later—­her father’s face and eyes as he ran down the steps to meet his wife.  For he looked at his daughters only afterwards, as they were all walking along together, much excited, everybody talking at once, and hanging on everybody’s arm."...  Yes, Buddy’s right!  We found we missed you so, we decided life wasn’t worth it.  You don’t know, Barbara, what it’s like without you—­you don’t know!”

Her father’s voice sounded to Sylvia so loud, so gay, so vital, so inexpressibly welcome....  She leaped up at his face like a young dog, for another kiss.  “Oh, I’m awfully glad you came!” she cried, wondering a little herself at the immensity of her relief.  She thought that she must get him by himself quickly and tell him her side of that hospital story, before her mother and Judith began on any virtuous raptures over it.