Love Stories

open windows, her blue calico wrapper ballooned about her and made ludicrous her frantic th

ds, fresh white for the day; on the centre table a vase of Easter lilies, and on the record-table near the door a potted hyacinth. The Nurse herself wore a bunch of violets tucked in her apron-band.

age-machine, women, grotesque and distorted of figure, in attitudes of weariness and expectancy, with patient eyes awaited

and brought down on smiling, pale mother faces. With tight-closed eyes and open mouths, each miracle squirmed a

don't want to feed that infant again! Do yo

that she was lost in admiration of it. And the child would take hold, all its small body set rigid in lines of desperate effort. Then it would relax suddenly, and spew out the finger, and the quiet hospital air would be rent with shrieks of lost illusion. Then Annie Petowski

d toast, of regular hours for the babies. From this throne, also, she directed periodic searches of the bedside stands, unearthing scraps of old toast, decaying fruit, candy

and spotted. Even her fresh apron and sleevelets did not quite conceal the damage. She had come in for a moment at the breakfast hour, and asked the Swede, Ellen Oll

case was "on." Excursions down the corridor by one or anot

as gone in;" and then, with bated breath, "The doctor with the red mustache has come"-

now the lilies came, and after them a lame young woman who played the organ in the chapel on Sundays, and who afterward went from ward to ward, singing little songs and accompanying herself on the mandolin sh

there four times, and knew all the nurses and nearly all the doctors. "Liz" had been known, in a shortage of nurses, to be called into the mysterious room down the hall

e foot of the empty bed. "Shall I put

ated maje

d," she said. "Not th

hy

r head toward

won't read the tract. She held her fingers in her ears last Sunday while the B

s not unversed in the

e asked, and because she was

a faint light of amusem

e is. She can put the kid in a home. That's what I do. Suppose she married the

ed at Liz, puzzled at th

a baby here?" s

d the blanket down with a practised hand, revealing a tiny red atom,

aid airily. "Funny li

er gazed diffiden

ery little

r the last six months-eleven pounds three ounces

le devil's sleeping form. The mandolin-player c

ot hear. She had moved down the ward. The mandolin-player heard only a snicker f

bed, and the Nurse, with tired but shining

oodless and wan-of hurt, defiant blue eyes. She had never before seen life so naked, so relentless. She shrank b

hrill, high wail, a rising and falling note of distress-the vo

rl up bodily, deposited her tenderly in the warm bed. Then she

t's over, and here you are!

r two had changed to an almost bloodless refinement. With her bright hair, she looked as if

she said

pulled the blanket

oothingly. "When you wake u

off and looked up despa

e said. "My God, Liz, it's