“Is she ill?” said Joyce, timidly drawing back as the nun started across the room.

“No, I think not,” was the answer.  “She says she can’t bear to be herded in one room with all those poor creatures, like a flock of sheep, with nothing to do but wait for death.  She has always been accustomed to having a room of her own, so that her greatest trial is in having no privacy.  She must eat, sleep, and live with a hundred other old women always around her.  She comes up here to bed whenever she can find the slightest ache for an excuse, just to be by herself.  I wish that we could give her a little spot that she could call her own, and shut the door on, and feel alone.  But it cannot be,” she added, with a sigh.  “It taxes our strength to the utmost to give them all even a bare home.”

By this time they had reached the cot, over the head of which hung a card, bearing the number “Thirty-one.”

“Here is a little friend to see you, grandmother,” said Sister Denisa, placing a chair by the bedside, and stooping to smooth back the locks of silvery hair that had strayed out from under the coarse white night-cap.  Then she passed quickly on to her other duties, leaving Joyce to begin the conversation as best she could.  The old woman looked at her sharply with piercing dark eyes, which must have been beautiful in their youth.  The intense gaze embarrassed Joyce, and to break the silence she hurriedly stammered out the first thing that came to her mind.

“Are you ill, to-day?”

The simple question had a startling effect on the old woman.  She raised herself on one elbow, and reached out for Joyce’s hand, drawing her eagerly nearer.  “Ah,” she cried, “you speak the language that my husband taught me to love, and the tongue my little children lisped; but they are all dead now, and I’ve come back to my native land to find no home but the one that charity provides.”

Her words ended in a wail, and she sank back on her pillow.  “And this is my birthday,” she went on.  “Seventy-three years old, and a pauper, cast out to the care of strangers.”

The tears ran down her wrinkled cheeks, and her mouth trembled pitifully.  Joyce was distressed; she looked around for Sister Denisa, but saw that they were alone, they two, in the great bare dormitory, with its long rows of narrow white cots.  The child felt utterly helpless to speak a word of comfort, although she was so sorry for the poor lonely old creature that she began to cry softly to herself.  She leaned over, and taking one of the thin, blue-veined hands in hers, patted it tenderly with her plump little fingers.

“I ought not to complain,” said the trembling voice, still broken by sobs.  “We have food and shelter and sunshine and the sisters.  Ah, that little Sister Denisa, she is indeed a smile of God to us all.  But at seventy-three one wants more than a cup of coffee and a clean handkerchief.  One wants something besides a bed and being just Number Thirty-one among two hundred other paupers.”