“Well, do you know our patients here get quite fond of our white wings as they call them?” returned Sister Louise, smiling.  “But you haven’t told me how you are, yet.  Better, I hope, and pretty comfortable.”

A tear suddenly rolled down Mrs. Brady’s cheek, but she preserved her lofty manner.

“Ah yes, thank ye, Sisther, as comfortable as I could expect in a place like this.  Of course I niver thought it’s here’ I’d be, but it’s on’y for a short time, thanks be to God!  My little boy’ll be comin’ home from America soon to take me out of it.”

“Why, that’s good news!” cried the Sister cheerfully.  “We must make you quite well and strong—­that is as strong as we can”—­with a compassionate glance, “by the time he comes.  When do you expect him?”

“Any day now, ma’am—­Sisther, I mane—­aye, indeed, I may say any day an’ every day, an’ I’m afeard his heart’ll be broke findin’ me in this place.  But no matther!”

Here she shook her head darkly, as though she could say much on that subject, but refrained out of consideration for Sister Louise.

“Well, we must do all we can for you meanwhile,” said the latter gently.  “Have you made acquaintance with your neighbours yet?  Poor Mrs. M’Evoy here is worse off than you, for she can’t lift her head just now.  Tell Mrs. Brady how it was you hurt your back, Mrs. M’Evoy.”

“Bedad, Sisther, ye know yerself it was into the canal I fell wid a can o’ milk,” said the old woman addressed, squinting fearfully in her efforts to catch a glimpse of the new patient.  “The Bishop says the last time he come round, ‘I s’pose,’ he says, ‘ye were goin’ to put wather in the milk.’  ‘No,’ says I, ’there was wather enough in it before.’”

Here Mrs. M’Evoy leered gleefully up at the Sister, and one or two feeble chuckles were heard from the neighbouring beds; but Mrs. Brady assumed an attitude which can only be described as one implying a mental drawing away of skirts, and preserved an impenetrable gravity.  Evidently she had never associated with “the like” of Mrs. M’Evoy in the circles in which she had hitherto moved.

“And there’s Kate Mahony on the other side,” pursued Sister Louise, without appearing to notice Mrs. Brady’s demeanour.  “She has been lying here for seventeen years; haven’t you, Kate?”

“Aye, Sisther,” said Kate, a thin-faced sweet-looking woman of about forty, looking up brightly.

“Poor Kate!” said the Sister in a caressing tone.  “You must get Kate to tell you her story some time, Mrs. Brady.  She has seen better days like you.”

“Oh, that indeed?” said Mrs. Brady, distantly but politely, and with a dawning interest; “I s’pose you are from the country then, like meself.”

“Ah no, ma’am,” returned Kate.  “I may say I was never three miles away from town.  I went into service when I was on’y a slip of a little girl, an’ lived with the wan lady till the rheumatic fever took me an’ made me what I am now.  You’re not from this town, I s’pose, ma’am.”