“To be sure!” I cried. “’First Aid to the Empire’—­it will look well on the bills.”

Sir Felix rubbed his hands together—­a trick of his when he is pleased.  “It’s an idea, eh?”

“A brilliant one.”

“Well, but you haven’t heard all.”  He looked at me almost slyly.  “It occurred to me, that while—­er—­associating this enthusiasm of ours with the imperial idea, we might at the same time do a good turn for ourselves.  You think that permissible?”

“Permissible?  For what else does an empire exist?”

“Quite so.  As I was saying to Lady Williams, only this morning, we must bring home to less thoughtful persons a sense of its beneficence.  Now it occurs to me:  why go on subscribing to these great public Nursing Funds, in which our mite is a mere drop in the ocean, when by sending up a nurse from our own town—­she would, of course, be a member of the League—­not only should we have the satisfaction of knowing that our help is effective, but the young woman would be earning a salary and supporting herself?”

“Admirable!” said I.  “It would look so much better in the papers too.”

“You see, we have at this moment a score of young women, all natives of the town and members of the League, undergoing instruction from our lecturer.  After the course there will be an examination; and then, with the lecturer’s help—­and the advice, if I might suggest it, of Lady Williams, who can tell him if the candidate’s family be respectable and deserving—­we can surely select a young person to do us credit.”

Sir Felix took his departure in the cheerfullest temper, and I record his suggestion as one eminently worthy of his head and his heart, although subsequent events have, alas! brought it to nought.  I doubt if we shall send up a nurse from Troy; indeed, I doubt if there will even be an examination.

Last evening the Young Women’s Christian Association attended its sixth Ambulance lecture.  The subject—­roller bandaging—­being a practical one, a small boy was had in, set on the platform, and bandaged in sight of the audience—­plain bandaged, reverse bandaged, figure-of-eight bandaged, bandaged on forefinger, thumb, hand, wrist and forearm, elbow, shoulder, knee, ankle, foot.  He declares that he enjoyed himself thoroughly.  After each demonstration the young women took a turn and practised with such assiduity that an hour slipped pleasantly away.  The bandages were applied, the spirals neatly stitched, and the stitches promptly snipped for the next pupil to begin.  An occasional prick with the needle evoked no more than a playful remonstrance from the boy and a ripple of laughter from the fair executants.  At length, alas!  Miss Sophy Rabling, in snipping her bandage from the boy’s foot, fumbled and drove a point of the scissors sharply into his toe.

With a howl he caught at his foot, from which one or two drops of blood were trickling.  And the sight of it so affected Miss Sophy that she dropped upon the platform in a swoon.  A class-mate in the body of the hall almost instantly followed her example.