Just after partaking of her frugal meal, Agnes was obliged to spring to her bedside, for all of a sudden Sister Theresa had started up out of her sleep, weeping most piteously, and Agnes feared she would throw herself out of bed.  But in a few minutes, by her kind, soothing voice, she had quieted her patient and got her to lie down again.

Agnes never was without her Bible, and bethinking herself that its holy words would have a good effect upon Theresa, she quickly opened it as chance directed.  It was at the twenty-third Psalm.

“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.  He leadeth me beside the still waters.”

Agnes was a magnificent reader, and as her flute-like voice, in clear, grand, musical tones, uttered word after word of this most beautiful psalm, not only Sister Theresa, but the other patient, seemed quickly to alter.  And ere she had concluded her reading.  Agnes noticed that both, but especially Theresa, looked better, or rather supremely happy.

“You are indeed an angel!” she exclaimed, seizing the hand of her nurse and covering it with kisses.  “They told me that the patients you were nursing called you Angel Agnes, and I am sure you are.  May God and the saints keep you ever an angel, as you are now.”

“Yes, yes,” added the other patient, fervently, “God bless you!  If we had all the rest of the nurses like you, I do not believe any body would die.  The hired nurses are nearly all worthless.  They work for money alone, and do not care whether the people they nurse live or die.”

“That is horrible.  I hope there are not many nurses of that description.”

“O, indeed, all are that way except the Sisters and yourself,” replied the lady.

At this juncture the doctor entered in a hurried manner.

“Well, Miss Arnold,” he exclaimed, “how are you all getting along?”

“O, very well, sir, very well.  I think we are all past danger.”

Agnes answered the inquiry in a light, cheery tone, that in itself was worth, as the saying goes, a cart-load of medicine.

“Upon my honor, ladies,” continued the doctor, as he advanced to the bed and took each of the invalids’ wrists at once, in order to save time, “our nurse here, Miss Arnold, is the most wonderful lady I have ever seen.  She has not failed to break the worst cases we have had.  Now your symptoms were of the most desperate character, and when you were taken, I never expected to see either of you alive this morning, and yet here you are recovering, and I verily believe beyond further danger.  Let me see your tongues.  Well, well, well, this is really astonishing.  You are both doing splendidly.  Just be a little careful, and you are perfectly out of peril.  Miss Arnold, you are worth all our nurses; and really I’m afraid all us physicians also put together.”

“Ah, Doctor, you flatter me,” laughed Agnes, much pleased at the same time to hear the flattery, as well because it seemed to have a brightening effect upon the patients as for any other reason.