|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 14
"They are some hot little thoughts, I wager," laughed the House Surgeon.
And then, from the far end of the cross-corridor, came the voice of the
Oldest Trustee, talking to the group:
". . . such a very sweet girl--never forgets her place or her duty.
She was brought here from the Foundling Asylum when she was a baby, in
almost a dying condition. Every one thought it was an incurable case;
the doctors still shake their heads over her miraculous recovery. Of
course it took years; and she grew up in the hospital."
With a look of dumb, battling anger the nurse in charge of Ward C
turned from the House Surgeon--her hands clenched--while the voice of
the Oldest Trustee came back to them, still exhibiting:
"No, we have never been able to find out anything about her parentage;
undoubtedly she was abandoned. We named her 'Margaret MacLean,' after
the hospital and the superintendent who was here then. Yes, indeed--a
very, very sad--"
When the Oldest Trustee reached the boardroom it was empty, barring the
primroses, which were guilelessly nodding in the green Devonshire bowl
on the President's desk.
IV
CURABLES AND INCURABLES
No one who entered the board-room that late afternoon remembered that
it was May Eve; and even had he remembered, it would have amounted to
nothing more than the mental process of association. It would not have
given him the faintest presentiment that at that very moment the Little
People were busy pressing their cloth-o'-dream mantles and reblocking
their wishing-caps; that the instant the sun went down the spell would
be off the faery raths, setting them free all over the world, and that
the gates of Tir-na-n'Og would be open wide for mortals to wander back
again. No, not one of the board remembered; the trustees sat looking
straight at the primroses and saw nothing, felt nothing, guessed
nothing.
They were not unusual types of trustees who served on the board of
Saint Margaret's. You could find one or more of them duplicated in the
directors' book of nearly any charitable institution, if you hunted for
them; the strange part was, perhaps, that they were gathered together
in a single unit of power. Besides the Oldest and the Meanest
Trustees, there were the Executive, the Social, the Disagreeable, the
Busiest, the Dominating, the Calculating, the Petty, and the Youngest
and Prettiest. She came fluttering in a minute late from her tea; and
right after her came the little gray wisp of a woman, who sat down in a
chair by the door so unpretentiously as to make it appear as though she
did not belong among them. When the others saw her they nodded
distantly: they had just been talking about her.
It seemed that she was the widow of the Richest Trustee. The board had
elected her to fill her husband's place lest the annual check of ten
thousand--a necessary item on Saint Margaret's books--might not be
forthcoming; and this was her first meeting. It was, in fact, her
first visit to the hospital. She could never bear to come during her
husband's trusteeship because, children having been denied her, she had
wished to avoid them wherever and whenever she could, and spare herself
the pain their suggestion always brought her. She would not have come
now, but that her husband's memory seemed to require it of her.
For years gossip had been busy with the wife of the Richest Trustee--as
the widow she did not relax her hold. What the trustees said that day
they only repeated from gossip: the little gray wisp of a woman was a
nonentity--nothing more--with the spirit of a mouse. She held no
position in society, and what she did with her time or her money no one
knew. The trustees smiled inwardly and reckoned silently with
themselves; at least they would never need to fear opposition from her
on any matter of importance.
The last person of all to enter the boardroom was the Senior Surgeon.
The President had evidently waited for him, for he nodded to the House
Surgeon to close the doors the moment he came.
Now the Senior Surgeon was a man who used capitals for Surgery,
Science, and Self, unconsciously eliminating them elsewhere. He had
begun in Saint Margaret's as house surgeon; and he had grown to be
considered by many of his own profession the leading man of his day.
The trustees were as proud of him as they were of the hospital, and it
has never been recorded in the traditions of Saint Margaret's that the
Senior Surgeon had ever asked for anything that went ungranted. He
seldom attended a board meeting; consequently when he came in at
five-thirty there was an audible rustle of excitement and the raising
of anticipatory eyebrows.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|