She made a last appeal to Doctor Willie that day, but he only shook his head gravely.

“Even if there was an operation now, Nellie,” said Doctor Willie that day, “he could not stand it.”

It was the first time that Twenty-two had known her name was Nellie.

That was the last day of Jane Brown’s probation.  On the next day she was to don her cap.  The Sentinel came out with a congratulatory editorial, and at nine o’clock that night the First Assistant brought an announcement, in the Head’s own writing, for the paper.

“The Head of the Training School announces with much pleasure the acceptance of Miss N. Jane Brown as a pupil nurse.”

Twenty-two sat and stared at it for quite a long time.

That night Jane Brown fought her battle and won.  She went to her room immediately after chapel, and took the family pictures off her little stand and got out ink and paper.  She put the photographs out of sight, because she knew that they were counting on her, and she could not bear her mother’s eyes.  And then she counted her money, because she had broken another thermometer, and the ticket home was rather expensive.  She had enough, but very little more.

After that she went to work.

It took her rather a long time, because she had a great deal to explain.  She had to put her case, in fact.  And she was not strong on either ethics or logic.  She said so, indeed, at the beginning.  She said also that she had talked to a lot of people, but that no one understood how she felt—­that there ought to be no professional ethics, or etiquette, or anything else, where it was life or death.  That she felt hospitals were to save lives and not to save feelings.  It seemed necessary, after that, to defend Doctor Willie—­without naming him, of course.  How much good he had done, and how he came to rely on himself and his own opinion because in the country there was no one to consult with.

However, she was not so gentle with the Staff.  She said that it was standing by and letting a patient die, because it was too polite to interfere, although they had all agreed among themselves that an operation was necessary.  And that if they felt that way, would they refuse to pull a child from in front of a locomotive because it was its mother’s business, and she didn’t know how to do it?

Then she signed it.

She turned it in at the Sentinel office the next morning while the editor was shaving.  She had to pass it through a crack in the door.  Even that, however, was enough for the editor in question to see that she wore no cap.

“But—­see here,” he said, in a rather lathery voice, “you’re accepted, you know.  Where’s the—­the visible sign?”

Jane Brown was not quite sure she could speak.  However, she managed.

“After you read that,” she said, “you’ll understand.”

He read it immediately, of course, growing more and more grave, and the soap drying on his chin.  Its sheer courage made him gasp.