The Head would probably never have come out flatly, but she had a wretched cold, and the First Assistant was giving her a mustard footbath, which was very hot.  The Head sat up with a blanket over her shoulders, and read lists while her feet took on the blush of ripe apples.  And at last she said: 

“How is that Probationer with the ridiculous name getting along?”

The First Assistant poured in more hot water.

“N.  Jane?” she asked.  “Well, she’s a nice little thing, and she seems willing.  But, of course——­”

The Head groaned.

“Nineteen!” she said.  “And no character at all.  I detest fluttery people.  She flutters the moment I go into the ward.”

The First Assistant sat back and felt of her cap, which was of starched tulle and was softening a bit from the steam.  She felt a thrill of pity for the Probationer.  She, too, had once felt fluttery when the Head came in.

“She is very anxious to stay,” she observed.  “She works hard, too.  I——­”

“She has no personality, no decision,” said the Head, and sneezed twice.  She was really very wretched, and so she was unfair.  “She is pretty and sweet.  But I cannot run my training school on prettiness and sweetness.  Has Doctor Harvard come in yet?”

“I—­I think not,” said the First Assistant.  She looked up quickly, but the Head was squeezing a lemon in a cup of hot water beside her.

Now, while the Head was having a footbath, and Twenty-two was having a stock-taking, and Augustus Baird was having his symptoms recorded, Jane Brown was having a shock.

She heard an unmistakable shuffling of feet in the corridor.

Sounds take on much significance in a hospital, and probationers study them, especially footsteps.  It gives them a moment sometimes to think what to do next.

Internes, for instance, frequently wear rubber soles on their white shoes and have a way of slipping up on one.  And the engineer goes on a half run, generally accompanied by the clanking of a tool or two.  And the elevator man runs, too, because generally the bell is ringing.  And ward patients shuffle about in carpet slippers, and the pharmacy clerk has a brisk young step, inclined to be jaunty.

But it is the Staff which is always unmistakable.  It comes along the corridor deliberately, inexorably.  It plants its feet firmly and with authority.  It moves with the inevitability of fate, with the pride of royalty, with the ease of the best made-to-order boots.  The ring of a Staff member’s heel on a hospital corridor is the most authoritative sound on earth.  He may be the gentlest soul in the world, but he will tread like royalty.

But this was not Staff.  Jane Brown knew this sound, and it filled her with terror.  It was the scuffling of four pairs of feet, carefully instructed not to keep step.  It meant, in other words, a stretcher.  But perhaps it was not coming to her.  Ah, but it was!