She tried her best to keep the frightened look out of her eyes.  By the way he watched her, however, she knew some of it must have crept in.  “Operation?” she managed to choke out at last.

Operation was a fairly common word in Ward C, and not an over-hopeful one.

“It’s this way, Thumbkin; and let’s make a bargain of it.  I think there’s a cure for that back of yours.  It hasn’t been tried very much; about often enough to make it worth while for us to take a chance.  I’ll be honest with you and tell you the house surgeon doesn’t think it can be done; but that’s where the bargain comes in.  He thinks he can mend my trouble, and I don’t; and we’re both dreadfully greedy to prove we’re right.  Now if you will give me my way with you I will give him his.  But you must come first.”

“A hundred years is a long time to be asleep,” she objected.

“Bless you, it won’t be a hundred minutes.”

“And does your back need it, too?”

“Not my back; my stomach.  It’s about the only chance for either of us, Thumbkin.”

“And you won’t unless I do?”

The Old Senior Surgeon gave his head a terrific shake; then he caught her small hands in his great, warm, comforting ones.  “Think.  It means a strong back; a pair of sturdy little legs to take you anywhere; and the whole world before you!”

“And you’ll have them, too?”

He smiled convincingly.

“All right.  Let’s.”  She gave his hand a hard, trustful squeeze.

She liked to remember that squeeze.  She often wondered if it might not have helped him to do what he had to do.

Her operation was record-making in its success; and after he had seen her well on the mend he gave himself over to the house surgeon and a fellow-colleague, according to the bargain.  He proved the house surgeon wrong, for he never rallied.  Undoubtedly he knew this would be the way of it; for he stopped in Ward C before he went up to the operating-room and said to her: 

“I shall be sleeping longer than you did, Thumbkin; but, never fear, I shall be waking some time, somewhere.  And remember this:  Never grow so strong and well that you forget how tiresome a hospital crib can be.  Never be so happy that you grow blind to the heartaches of other children; and never wander so far away from Saint Margaret’s that you can’t come back, sometimes, and make a story for some one else.”

She puzzled a good bit over this, especially the first part of it; but when they told her the next day, she understood.  Probably she grieved for him more than had any one else; even more than the members of his own family or profession.  For, whereas there are many people in the world who can give life to others, there are but few who can help others to possess it.

What childhood she had had she left behind her soon after this, along with her aching back, her helpless limbs, and the little iron crib in Ward C.