And scattered here and there, rocking in chairs or standing at windows, enjoying the Sunday respite from sewing or the bandage-machine, women, grotesque and distorted of figure, in attitudes of weariness and expectancy, with patient eyes awaited their crucifixion.  Behind them, in the beds, a dozen perhaps who had come up from death and held the miracle in their arms.

The miracles were small and red, and inclined to feeble and ineffectual wrigglings.  Fists were thrust in the air and brought down on smiling, pale mother faces.  With tight-closed eyes and open mouths, each miracle squirmed and nuzzled until the mother would look with pleading eyes at the Nurse.  And the Nurse would look severe and say: 

“Good gracious, Annie Petowski, surely you don’t want to feed that infant again!  Do you want the child to have a dilated stomach?”

Fear of that horrible and mysterious condition, a dilated stomach, would restrain Annie Petowski or Jennie Goldstein or Maggie McNamara for a time.  With the wisdom of the serpent, she would give the child her finger to suck—­a finger so white, so clean, so soft in the last week 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 or Jennie Goldstein or Maggie McNamara would watch the Nurse with open hostility and defiance, and her rustling exit from the ward would be followed by swift cessation of cries, and, close to Annie or Jennie or Maggie’s heart, there would be small ecstatic gurglings—­and peace.

In her small domain the Nurse was queen.  From her throne at the record-table, she issued proclamations of baths and fine combs, of clean bedding and trimmed nails, of tea and 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 an occasional cigarette.  From the throne, too, she sent daily a blue-wrappered and pig-tailed brigade to the kitchen, armed with knives, to attack the dinner potatoes.

But on this Easter morning, the queen looked tired and worn.  Her crown, a starched white cap, had slipped back on her head, and her blue-and-white dress was stained 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 Ollman, to serve the breakfast for her; and at half past eight she had appeared again for a moment, and had turned down one of the beds and put hot-water bottles in it.

The ward ate little breakfast.  It was always nervous when a case was “on.”  Excursions down the corridor by one or another of the blue-wrappered brigade brought back bits of news: 

“The doctor is smoking a cigarette in the hall;” or, “Miss Jones, the day assistant, has gone in;” and then, with bated breath, “The doctor with the red mustache has come”—­by which it was known that things were going badly, the staff man having been summoned.