“O’er all the way, green palms and blossoms gay,”

he sang, and his clear tenor came welling up the staircase to Liz, and past her to the ward, and to the group behind the screen.

“Are strewn this day in festal preparation,
Where Jesus comes to wipe our tears away—­
E’en now the throng to welcome Him prepare.”

On the throne-chair by the record-table, the Nurse sat and listened.  And because it was Easter and she was very happy and because of the thrill in the tenor voice that came up the stairs to her, and because of the page in the order-book about bran baths and the rest of it, she cried a little, surreptitiously, and let the tears drop down on a yellow hospital record.

The song was almost done.  Liz, on the stairs, had fed her baby twenty minutes too soon, and now it lay, sleeping and sated, in her lap.  Liz sat there, brooding over it, and the last line of the song came up the staircase.

      “Blessed is He who comes bringing sal-va-a-a-ation!”

the Junior Medical sang.

The services were over.  Downstairs the small crowd dispersed slowly.  The minister shook hands with the nurses at the door, and the Junior Medical rolled up his song and wondered how soon he could make rounds upstairs again.

Liz got up, with her baby in her arms, and padded in to the throne-chair by the record-table.

“He can sing some, can’t he!” she said.

“He has a beautiful voice.”  The Nurse’s eyes were shining.

Liz moved off.  Then she turned and came back.

“I—­I know you’ll tell me I’m a fool,” she said; “but I’ve decided to keep the kid, this time.  I guess I’ll make out, somehow.”

Behind the screen, Rosie had lighted a cigarette and was smoking, sublimely unconscious of the blue smoke swirl that rose in telltale clouds high above her head.  The baby had dropped asleep, and Claribel lay still.  But her eyes were not on the ceiling; they were on the child.

Al leaned forward and put his lips to the arm that circled the baby.

“I’m sorry, kid,” he said.  “I guess it was the limit, all right.  Do you hate me?”

She looked at him, and the hardness and defiance died out of her eyes.  She shook her head.

“No.”

“Do you—­still—­like me a little?”

“Yes,” in a whisper.

“Then what’s the matter with you and me and the little mutt getting married and starting all over—­eh?”

He leaned over and buried his face with a caressing movement in the hollow of her neck.

Rose extinguished her cigarette on the foot of the bed, and, careful of appearances, put the butt in her chatelaine.

“I guess you two don’t need me any more,” she said yawning.  “I’m going back home to bed.”

“ARE WE DOWNHEARTED?  NO!”

I

There are certain people who will never understand this story, people who live their lives by rule of thumb.  Little lives they are, too, measured by the letter and not the spirit.  Quite simple too.  Right is right and wrong is wrong.