“The only person in the world who believes in me!” said the girl bitterly.  “And he’s a fool!”

The Dummy smiled into her eyes.  In his faded, childish eyes there was the eternal sadness of his kind, eternal tenderness, and the blur of one who has looked much into a far distance.  Suddenly he bent over and placed the man’s hand over the girl’s.

The last wall was down!  Jerry buried his face in the white coverlet.

* * * * *

The interne was pacing the roof anxiously.  Golden sunset had faded to lavender—­to dark purple—­to night.

The Probationer came up at last—­not a probationer now, of course; but she had left off her cap and was much less stately.

“I’m sorry,” she explained; “but I’ve been terribly busy.  It went off so well!”

“Of course—­if you handled it.”

“You know—­don’t you?—­it was the lover who came.  He looks so strong and good—­oh, she is safe now!”

“That’s fine!” said the interne absently.  They were sitting on the parapet now and by sliding his hand along he found her fingers.  “Isn’t it a glorious evening?” He had the fingers pretty close by that time; and suddenly gathering them up he lifted the hand to his lips.

“Such a kind little hand!” he said over it.  “Such a dear, tender little hand!  My hand!” he said, rather huskily.

Down in the courtyard the Dummy sat with the parrot on his knee.  At his feet the superintendent’s dog lay on his side and dreamed of battle.  The Dummy’s eyes lingered on the scar the Avenue Girl had bandaged—­how long ago!

His eyes wandered to the window with the young John among the lilies.  In the stable were still the ambulance horses that talked to him without words.  And he had the parrot.  If he thought at all it was that his Father was good and that, after all, he was not alone.  The parrot edged along his knee and eyed him with saturnine affection.

THE MIRACLE

I

Big Mary was sweeping the ward with a broom muffled in a white bag.  In the breeze from the open windows, her blue calico wrapper ballooned about her and made ludicrous her frantic thrusts after the bits of fluff that formed eddies under the beds and danced in the spring air.

She finished her sweeping, and, with the joyous scraps captured in her dust-pan, stood in the doorway, critically surveying the ward.  It was brilliantly clean and festive; on either side a row of beds, 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.  One of the patients had seen the Junior Medical give them to her.  The Eastern sun, shining across the beds, made below them, on the polished floor, black islands of shadow in a gleaming sea of light.