If she had not gone back to the mirror to see that the general effect was as crisp as it should be, things would have been different for Liz, and for the new mother back in the ward.  But she did go back; and there, lying on the floor in front of the bureau, all folded together, was a piece of white paper exactly as if it has been tucked in her belt with the violets.

She opened it rather shakily, and it was a leaf from the ward order-book, for at the top it said: 

      Annie Petowski—­may sit up for one hour.

And below that: 

      Goldstein baby—­bran baths.

And below that: 

      I love you.  E.J.

“E.J.” was the Junior Medical.

So the Nurse went back to the ward, and sat down, palpitating, in the throne-chair by the table, and spread her crisp skirts, and found where the page had been torn out of the order-book.

And as the smiles of sovereigns are hailed with delight by their courts, so the ward brightened until it seemed to gleam that Easter afternoon.  And a sort of miracle happened:  none of the babies had colic, and the mothers mostly slept.  Also, one of the ladies of the House Committee looked in at the door and said: 

“How beautiful you are here, and how peaceful!  Your ward is always a sort of benediction.”

The lady of the House Committee looked across and saw the new mother, with the sunshine on her yellow braids, and her face refined from the furnace of pain.

“What a sweet young mother!” she said, and rustled out, leaving an odor of peau d’Espagne.

The girl lay much as Liz had left her.  Except her eyes, there was nothing in her face to show that despair had given place to wild mutiny.  But Liz knew; Liz had gone through it all when “the first one” came; and so, from the end of the ward, she rocked and watched.

The odor of peau d’Espagne was still in the air, eclipsing the Easter lilies, when Liz got up and sauntered down to the girl’s bed.

“How are you now, dearie?” she asked, and, reaching under the blankets, brought out the tiny pearl-handled knife with which the girl had been wont to clean her finger-nails.  The girl eyed her savagely, but said nothing; nor did she resist when Liz brought out her hands and examined the wrists.  The left had a small cut on it.

“Now listen to me,” said Liz.  “None of that, do you hear?  You ain’t the only one that’s laid here and wanted to end it all.  And what happened?  Inside of a month they’re well and strong again, and they put the kid somewhere, and the folks that know what’s happened get used to it, and the ones that don’t know don’t need to know.  Don’t be a fool!”

She carried the knife off, but the girl made no protest.  There were other ways.

The Nurse was very tired, for she had been up almost all night.  She sat at the record-table with her Bible open, and, in the intervals of taking temperatures, she read it.  But mostly she read about Annie Petowski being allowed to sit up, and the Goldstein baby having bran baths, and the other thing written below!