Now the Head Nurse was interviewing an applicant; and, as the H.N. took a constitutional each morning in the courtyard and believed in losing no time, she was holding the interview as she walked.

“I think I would make a good nurse,” said the applicant, a trifle breathless, the h.n. being a brisk walker.  “I am so sympathetic.”

The H.N. stopped and raised a reproving forefinger.

“Too much sympathy is a handicap,” she orated.  “The perfect nurse is a silent, reliable, fearless, emotionless machine—­this little building here is the isolation pavilion.”

“An emotionless machine,” repeated the applicant.  “I see—­an e——­”

The words died on her lips.  She was looking past a crowd of birds on the windowsill to where, just inside, Billy Grant and the Nurse in a very mussed cap were breakfasting together.  And as she looked Billy Grant bent over across the tray.

“I adore you!” he said distinctly and, lifting the Nurse’s hands, kissed first one and then the other.

“It is hard work,” said Miss Smith—­having made a note that the boys in the children’s ward must be restrained from lowering a pasteboard box on a string from a window—­“hard work without sentiment.  It is not a romantic occupation.”

She waved an admonitory hand toward the window, and the box went up swiftly.  The applicant looked again toward the pavilion, where Billy Grant, having kissed the Nurse’s hands, had buried his face in her two palms.

The mild October sun shone down on the courtyard, with its bandaged figures in wheel-chairs, its cripples sunning on a bench, their crutches beside them, its waterless fountain and dingy birds.

The applicant thrilled to it all—­joy and suffering, birth and death, misery and hope, life and love.  Love!

The H.N. turned to her grimly, but her eyes were soft.

“All this,” she said, waving her hand vaguely, “for eight dollars a month!”

“I think,” said the applicant shyly, “I should like to come.”

GOD’S FOOL

I

The great God endows His children variously.  To some He gives intellect—­and they move the earth.  To some He allots heart—­and the beating pulse of humanity is theirs.  But to some He gives only a soul, without intelligence—­and these, who never grow up, but remain always His children, are God’s fools, kindly, elemental, simple, as if from His palette the Artist of all had taken one colour instead of many.

The Dummy was God’s fool.  Having only a soul and no intelligence, he lived the life of the soul.  Through his faded, childish old blue eyes he looked out on a world that hurried past him with, at best, a friendly touch on his shoulder.  No man shook his hand in comradeship.  No woman save the little old mother had ever caressed him.  He lived alone in a world of his own fashioning, peopled by moving, noiseless figures and filled with dreams—­noiseless because the Dummy had ears that heard not and lips that smiled at a kindness, but that did not speak.