It was probably extremely good for her.

She was frightfully tired that day, and toward evening the little glow of service began to fade.  There seemed to be nothing to do for Johnny but to wait.  Doctor Willie had seemed to think that nature would clear matters up there, and had requested no operation.  She smoothed beds and carried cups of water and broke another thermometer.  And she put the eggs from home in the ward pantry and made egg-nogs of them for Stanislas Krzykolski, who was unaccountably upset as to stomach.

She had entirely forgotten Twenty-two.  He had stayed away all that day, in a sort of faint hope that she would miss him.  But she had not.  She was feeling rather worried, to tell the truth.  For a Staff surgeon going through the ward, had stopped by Johnny’s bed and examined the pupils of his eyes, and had then exchanged a glance with the Senior Surgical Interne that had perplexed her.

In the chapel at prayers that evening all around her the nurses sat and rested, their tired hands folded in their laps.  They talked a little among themselves, but it was only a buzzing that reached the Probationer faintly.  Some one near was talking about something that was missing.

“Gone?” she said.  “Of course it is gone.  The bath-room man reported it to me and I went and looked.”

“But who in the world would take it?”

“My dear,” said the first speaker, “who does take things in a hospital, anyhow?  Only—­a tin sign!”

It was then that the Head came in.  She swept in; her grey gown, her grey hair gave her a majesty that filled the Probationer with awe.  Behind her came the First Assistant with the prayer-book and hymnal.  The Head believed in form.

Jane Brown offered up a little prayer that night for Johnny Fraser, and another little one without words, that Doctor Willie was right.  She sat and rested her weary young body, and remembered how Doctor Willie was loved and respected, and the years he had cared for the whole countryside.  And the peace of the quiet room, with the Easter lilies on the tiny altar, brought rest to her.

It was when prayers were over that the Head made her announcement.  She rose and looked over the shadowy room, where among the rows of white caps only the Probationer’s head was uncovered, and she said: 

“I have an announcement to make to the training school.  One which I regret, and which will mean a certain amount of hardship and deprivation.

“A case of contagion has been discovered in one of the wards, and it has been considered necessary to quarantine the hospital.  The doors were closed at seven-thirty this evening.”

II

Considering that he could not get out anyhow, Twenty-two took the news of the quarantine calmly.  He reflected that, if he was shut in, Jane Brown was shut in also.  He had a wicked hope, at the beginning, that the Senior Surgical Interne had been shut out, but at nine o’clock that evening that young gentleman showed up at the door of his room, said “Cheer-o,” came in, helped himself to a cigarette, gave a professional glance at Twenty-two’s toes, which were all that was un-plastered of the leg, and departing threw back over his shoulder his sole conversational effort: