Part 5

But the door had opened and the white-coated boy was standing, holding out three large boxes and grinning pleasantly.

Herman Medfield, from his pillow, groaned.

Aunt Jane glanced toward him with reassurance in her look--"I shall take them all-- You don't need to worry. You won't be bothered. You go get the wheel-tray, Preston, and we'll take 'em all at once."

They filled the cart--the three great boxes underneath and the loose flowers on top covering them and trailing over the sides and ends: and Preston wheeled it out the door.

Aunt Jane, still with her hands full of blossoms, looked back with a smile. "Now you'll rest comfortable," she said.

XVIII

When the wheel-tray appeared in the door of the Children's Ward and Aunt Jane--with her arms overflowing--close behind it, there was silence for a breath, and then a cry----

"Look there!"

"My goodness!"

"See the flowers!"

They leaned forward with eager hands, or raised themselves on a hand or elbow, as she went down between the beds, pushing the wheel-tray before her.

She smiled and nodded and came to a full stop by the big table in the centre of the ward. She laid her armful of flowers carefully on the table and turned to the tray.

The room was in a joyful bubble. "Where did they come from? Look at the roses. My!"

They reached out hands to her--"Where'd they come from, Aunt Jane?"... "Who sent them to us?"... "My! Look at the vi'lets!"

She smiled and heaped the blossoms on the table and disclosed the three boxes beneath. There was a hush of expectancy. There were always flowers in the ward--a bunch or two here and there--but not such a feast as these!

They waited, impatient.

Aunt Jane took her time. She polished her glasses and returned them to her nose and adjusted them carefully. Then she took up one of the boxes and read the florist's name printed on the top--"J. L. Parker & Co. He always sends nice flowers," she said heartily.

"Did he send them to us?"

"Well, they came from his greenhouse. He raised them--planted them and took care of them, and so on." Her fingers were busy with the tape, untying it. "But another man _sent_ them--a man by the name of--Herman."

"Mr. Herman sent them!" They waited.

She lifted the cover and held out the box and a little cry went up from the ward, half repressed and full of awed delight.... It was a happy thing to see a great trayful of blossoms come rolling in; and it was a still more beautiful thing to have the cover lifted from the box, and all that color and fragrance leap out!

They watched with eager eyes.

Aunt Jane lifted a card from the top of the flowers and looked at it and tucked it away in the pocket of her big apron. The card had a narrow black edge.

"What did it say, Aunt Jane? What was on it?"

Aunt Jane looked at them over her glasses. "Just the name," she said. "The name of the one that sent them. People always send names with flowers, don't they?" She lifted a handful of the blossoms and shook them loose till they filled and overflowed the box. "They send names--so you'll know who it was sent them."

"Mr. Herman sent these, didn't he?"

"Yes, Mr. Herman sent them and you're going to each have one for your own. I'm going to let you choose."

There was laughing and chatter and a happy stir as Aunt Jane carried the boxes from bed to bed.

She watched the hands reach to the choosing--and hesitate--and the eyes fill with light--and little smiles come as they sank back contented.... She had a sudden glimpse of Herman Medfield in his blue-and-gold Chinese coat, waving them away.

"Seems a pity he can't see them," she thought, watching the faces. "They're all different--just as different as the flowers be!"

For some of them held the flowers in both hands; and some of them laid them on the pillows and some were smelling them and some were only looking; and one blossom was caught into the iron framework of a bed where the sun fell on it and the child was looking at it with wonder-filled eyes.... It was her own--her flower--that some one had sent--a crimson rose with soft dark color clear to the heart of it where the sun went in. It nodded down to her.

Aunt Jane, looking at her, thought of the people who had sent the flowers to Herman Medfield.

"I guess they didn't any of them think anything quite as nice as this would come of their flowers!" she said to the nurse who had brought the vases and jars for the flowers and was standing beside her at the table.

The nurse glanced down the ward. "They like them, don't they? But it seems a pity, almost, not to have them in water. They fade so soon!"

"Well, I don't know"--Aunt Jane surveyed the room slowly--"I guess they're doing about as much good now as they ever will. There's something about a flower--about holding it right in your hand--that does something to you. It isn't the same thing as having it in water."

"I don't see why not." The nurse glanced again, a little puzzled, down the room.

"Well, I don't know why _not_," said Aunt Jane. "Seems as if it would be the same.... But it isn't! When it's in water somehow you know it's safe--_your_ rose.... You know it's going to keep--just as long as it can; and you look at it--kind of on the outside. But when you have it in your hand--it's all there! Maybe you know it can't last very long and you just take it in all over----"

The nurse laughed out.

"Yes, I know that sounds foolish," Aunt Jane nodded. "But we don't any of us know just what happens to us." She was looking down the ward as if she saw something beyond the beds and the sun shining in on them.

The nurse gathered up the bits of leaves and the stems and litter from the floor and table and threw them on the wheel-tray and pushed it from the room.

The children's eyes watched it go and returned to their blossoms.

Jimmie Sullivan had clumped over to Aunt Jane, carrying his carnation. His new leg worked better to-day. He reached up an arm and Aunt Jane bent her ear.

She listened and shook her head. "No, I can't tell stories to-day. I'm going to hold Susie a little while, and then I've got my work to do. I can't be bothering with you children all the time!"

She went over to the bed where the crimson rose was and held out her arms. The child climbed into them and laughed. She was a gay little thing--not four years old. To-morrow she would be sitting up and the next day she would go home.

Aunt Jane knew the home.... The father and mother drunk, perhaps. The child had been broken, between them, and had come to the House of Mercy for repairs.... She held her in her arms and rocked a little--and thought.... Something must be done to protect the child.... Dr. Carmon must do something. He always did things--if he had to. Aunt Jane rocked back and forth, thinking. She must take him when he was in good humor--to-morrow morning perhaps.

The child raised her hand to Aunt Jane's face. "You don't smile!" she said imperiously.

Aunt Jane looked down at her severely.

The child laughed out, and nestled close and presently they were playing a game. It was not a new game in the ward; other children played it sometimes. But you were only allowed to play it if you had been very ill and were getting well; or perhaps if you were going home--day after to-morrow, and father and mother might be drunk and might break tables and chairs--and perhaps a child's arm if it got in the way of their playfulness.... The game was to catch Aunt Jane off guard and take off her spectacles and cap--and see how she looked.

The child reached up a quick hand and laughed.... Aunt Jane dodged and shook her head, and escaped the hand. And then--perhaps because Susie was going home day after to-morrow--she had caught off the spectacles and Aunt Jane's cap lay on the floor and the hair was escaping from its pins and coming down all about her face and shoulders--and the child was lying back against her arm, looking at her and laughing happily.

The door from the corridor swung silently, and Dr. Carmon stood looking into the room.

The children in the beds turned merry eyes to him.

But his hand made a gesture and they held their breath, laughing as he came down between the beds and stood looking sternly at the figure in the big chair.

Aunt Jane was groping at the tumbled hair and she was laughing gently, watching the child's face.

Then she looked up----

"Mercy sakes!" Her hand reached for her cap.

But Dr. Carmon had bent to the floor and picked up the cap. He was holding it and looking at her. "How old are you, Aunt Jane?" he said sternly.

Aunt Jane, out of the maze of her hair, looked up. "I am forty-five years old," she said. "Give me my cap!"

"Say, 'please,'" said Dr. Carmon gravely, holding it at arm's length.

From the beds, the children looked on with shining eyes.

Aunt Jane looked at the cap--and at the child in her arms--and felt the eyes encircling her--and smiled a little.

"Please," she said meekly, and her hand reached up.

But Dr. Carmon held it still at arm's length. "Say, 'please, Frederic,'" he insisted.... Not even the nearest bed could have guessed the words that went with the laughing gesture of the hand holding the cap.

But Aunt Jane's face flushed swiftly.

She gathered the child in her arms and carried her to her bed and put her down gently. Then her hands caught up the tumbled hair and fastened it in place and smoothed it down, and she came placidly back to Dr. Carmon.

His face was very grave. But something in behind his eyes laughed.

He held out the cap with a low bow.

She took it and put it on her head, with dignity, and looked for her spectacles.

"They're on the table," said Dr. Carmon.

He handed them to her and she put them on and gazed at him in serene competence. "I'll send Miss Simpson up to you--I suppose you'll want her," she said.

"Yes--_please_," said Dr. Carmon, polite and grave.

Aunt Jane hesitated a second. Then her hand motioned to the beds. "The Lord never see fit to let me have any of my own--not to grow up.... I've always thought he was making it up to me this way," she said, and there was something almost like an appeal in the quiet words.

The doctor looked at her, and then at the children's faces. "I should say he's making it up to _them_," he said gruffly.

He watched the serene figure as it passed through the swinging doors.... His face, as he went among the children and questioned them and listened absently to their replies, was full of gentleness and kindness, and a little, shy, flitting happiness that beamed on them.

XIX

The cards Aunt Jane had taken from the boxes of flowers remained untouched in her apron pocket.

She had intended to take them to Herman Medfield at once. But the days that followed the flowers in the Children's Ward had been busy ones. Serious cases had come in and Dr. Carmon's face had been severe and a little anxious. No one would have guessed from its puckered gaze as he looked at Aunt Jane and gave minute directions for the case in Room 18 that he had ever seen the correct muslin cap except as it looked now, framing her serene face.

He gazed at it absently and fussed at his pocket and took out his notes and consulted them. "I am to be sent for, you understand, if there is the slightest change!" He looked at her severely.

"We'll send for you," said Aunt Jane quietly, "same as we always do."

There was a tap on the office door and she went leisurely across to open it.

It was the laundress with three cards in her wet thumb. She half drew back as she caught a glimpse of Dr. Carmon's bulky form.

"I found 'em in the pocket of your apron," she announced in a stage whisper. "They got a little mite wet, but I dried 'em off."

Aunt Jane received the cards and returned to Dr. Carmon.

He glanced at them inquiringly.

"Some cards that came with flowers." She laid them on her desk.

"Somebody been sending you flowers!" He relaxed a little over the joke.

"Mr. Medfield's flowers," said Aunt Jane tranquilly.

His pencil stopped and he regarded the cards stiffly.

"How many cards does he send you with flowers?" he asked.

Aunt Jane smiled. "He didn't send them. They came with some flowers for _him_."

"Umph!" Dr. Carmon's pencil went on with its notes. When he had gone and Aunt Jane was alone in the office--she took up the cards and looked at them. She might take them up to Mr. Medfield now, before dinner--There would be time.

Herman Medfield had summoned Aunt Jane several times during the hurried days, and she had sent back word each time that she would come when she was not so busy.

She smiled a little as she looked down at the cards. She could see him, fuming and giving instructions that she was to come at once, and Miss Canfield's face as she took the message.

She put the cards in her pocket and went along the hall to Suite A.

Herman Medfield propped up in bed, surrounded by books and papers, looked up with a little scowling frown.

Aunt Jane glanced at it and crossed the room. She gathered up the books and papers from the bed and carried them to the table and laid them down. "I guess you won't want these any more, will you? It's most dinner-time."

She sat down by him.

His face relaxed. "I haven't seen you for four days," he remarked dryly.

"I've been busy," returned Aunt Jane. "A good many folks suffering."

He was silent. She watched the face with a shrewd, kindly smile.

"You hadn't thought as anybody _could_ suffer, maybe--anybody except you?"

"No--I hadn't thought of anything." He looked ashamed, but he held his point. "_I've_ suffered--horribly!" he said.

"I thought likely you would." Aunt Jane was placid.

He stared.

"You're the kind that's liable to suffer," she said slowly, "--all sort o' tewed up inside.... That kind has to suffer a good deal."

He looked down at his hands. Probably no one had ever spoken to Herman Medfield just as Aunt Jane was speaking.

She held the cards toward him--the black-edged one on top. "They came in your flower-boxes."

He took them without seeing them. Then he glanced at the black one and pushed them away.

"The same one that came before--isn't it?" remarked Aunt Jane serenely.

"Yes."

"I thought it was the same name. The flowers were nice that came with it--roses--red ones."

He was silent.

"I gave Susie Cannon a bunch of them to take home with her. Her folks drink--both of 'em."

He stared at her. Then his face smiled a little. "It's a new cure for the drink habit, isn't it--red roses?" He laughed a little cynically.

Aunt Jane regarded him impartially.

"Your folks didn't ever any of 'em drink, did they?"

"You mean--?" His face was politely puzzled.

"Get drunk, I mean-- You don't come of a drinking family, do you?"

"No." His eyes were still a little amused.

"I reckoned not. Steve Cannon does--and his wife drinks. They'd broke Susie's arm between 'em. So she came to us."

He was looking at her thoughtfully. "How old is she?"

"Three," said Aunt Jane, "three--going on four."

"Good God!"

She nodded. "Yes, He's good. But somebody's got to look after Susie."

He waited a minute. Then he spoke, almost hesitatingly. "I don't suppose that money would do--any good?"

She shook her head. "I don't know what'll do good. Dr. Carmon's got to find out and do it. He generally does--when things get too bad."

There was a knock on the door.

"Your dinner, I guess," said Aunt Jane.

But it was Preston--with a box. When he saw Medfield's eyes he half retreated. Aunt Jane held out her hand.

"I'll take care of it," she said. She laid it on her lap. "Miss Canfield said you wasn't having 'em brought here any more.... I guess Preston made a mistake, maybe."

"_I_ 'guess' he did," replied Medfield. His eye was on the box, balefully.

Aunt Jane took it up and undid it slowly. When she looked in she smiled. She took out a black-edged card and handed it to him. "She's sent another one!"

He groaned softly.

"I don't know what we'll do--if they keep coming in like this," she was fingering the blossoms tranquilly and looking at them.

He lay back on his pillows. "That's your affair!" He smiled more cheerfully. "You said _I_ should not be bothered!" He closed his eyes.

"The Children's Ward is full," said Aunt Jane thoughtfully. "It's a regular flower-garden--every bed a posy-bed." She laughed comfortably and looked at him. "You'd ought to have seen the way they looked when they got your flowers. They were tickled most to death with 'em!"

"I am glad they enjoyed them," said Medfield tamely.

"I felt as if it was 'most a pity they couldn't know you sent 'em," she added.

He started a little and Aunt Jane put out a hand. "Don't you worry, Mr. Medfield. I didn't tell 'em. I just said it was a man--by the name of 'Herman'.... But maybe you'll get it, all the same."

He stared at her. "Get--it?"

She nodded. "They'll be thinking about that Mr. Herman--and kind of talking about him and loving him.... I reckon it'll do him good--whoever he is." She was looking at 'Mr. Herman' in space, regarding him with kindly gaze.

Medfield smiled grimly. "I don't suppose you know what it is--not to want any one to know who you are?"

She looked at him. "I should hate terribly not to have folks know I'm Jane Holbrook!"

She was thoughtful a minute. "Seems as if it wouldn't be _me_--not more than half me--if folks didn't know I was Aunt Jane!" She was looking at him questioningly.

He shook his head.

"You've never been in my place." The words were dry.

"No.... I have a good many things to be thankful for," she added impersonally.

His eyes were looking at something before him and there was a little hard smile in their gaze. "Let some of them try it awhile," he said, as if answering an accusation. "Let them try!" He turned to her.

"I can't go in a street-car or a restaurant or a store in town--I can't walk along the street like other men--without being beset by people with axes to grind." He looked at Aunt Jane as if he thought she might have an axe concealed somewhere about her person. "They carry them around with them in their pockets," he said savagely, "ready the minute they see me coming down the street. They line up with them and wait for me to appear. The minute a man hears my name, he doesn't think of _me_--he's thinking what he can get out of me." His mouth set itself close. "I'm not a _man_--I'm money!"

Aunt Jane's look was full of twinkling sympathy that went out to him. "It's a pity you didn't think about that sooner, wasn't it?"

He stared.

"You might 'a' give away most of it--if you'd thought in time."

The stare broke. "You think it is easy, don't you?" he scoffed.

Her face grew sober. "No, I don't think it's easy.... Money seems to stick to folks' fingers--kind o' glues 'em together, I guess."

He rubbed his thin fingers absently and looked down at them.

"It seems to me I could find a way, but I suppose I should be just like the rest, if I had it--holding on to it for dear life!" She smiled at him.

He was silent a minute, looking before him. "Sometimes I think I would give every dollar I have in the world," he said slowly--"to have some one think of me apart from my money!" He looked at the face in its muslin cap. He knew he had never spoken to any one as he was speaking to Aunt Jane. He had a sense of freeing himself from something.

He watched the face in its cap.... "I don't suppose any one can understand--" He broke off with a sigh.

"Yes, I understand, I guess." She was looking down at the box of flowers in her lap. "We all have our besetting sins. I have 'em! I guess money's a kind of besetting sin!"

XX

"If I felt the way you do, Mr. Medfield, I'd do something."

"What would you do?" He watched her face.

"Well--I'd find things." The face in its cap filled with little thoughts that came and went.... "Dear me! There's so many things, I wouldn't know which to do!"

"Suppose you tell _me_ a few."

"Well--there's things.... Jimmie Sullivan needs a new leg, for one thing. He needs it the worst way----"

"_Who_ is Jimmie Sullivan?" asked the millionaire.

"He's in the Children's Ward. Belongs to nobody--as you might say. We're kind of carrying him along till he gets on his feet."

"Gets on his legs, you mean?" His face had lost its fretted look; it was smiling a little.

"It's a frame leg he needs--one of the kind that lets out and stretches as he grows. Dr. Carmon's made him one--a sort of make-shift leg.... A good one costs two hundred and twenty-five dollars."

"Would you mind giving me a pencil and paper?" said Medfield.

Aunt Jane brought it from the table and he made a note.

"Two hundred and twenty-five, you said?"

She nodded. "If he don't have it--a good frame one--his leg will be the kind that flops all round.... I've seen beggars with 'em sometimes, selling pencils and so on. I can't hardly bear to see 'em that way!"

"I should think not! Horrible!"

"Then, there's Mrs. Pelton----"

"I don't seem to remember--Mrs. Pelton?" he said politely.

"Why she's the one you're--" Aunt Jane stopped suddenly.

"Yes?"

"She's a woman that came the same day you did," she said safely.

"Oh!" His mind seemed to be looking back--to the day when he came to the House of Mercy, perhaps.

Aunt Jane did not disturb him.

Presently he took up his pencil with a little sigh. "What were you saying about a Mrs. Pelton?" he asked.

"She came the day you did and _she's_ sitting up! And her case was a good deal worse than yours." She was looking at him almost severely.

"But-- She had her operation sooner--than I did! _I_ had to wait--almost a week--You know I had to wait!" He was like a sick boy--with his excuses and his injured look.

"Yes--she was operated on--a day or two sooner--maybe. But she's acted better than you have, every way." She looked at him over her spectacles. "And she's a little mite of a thing. Don't come up to your shoulder hardly."

He smiled ruefully and took up the pencil. "I am going to try---- What about this Mrs. Pelton? What would you do for her if you were as badly off--as I am?"

She gave him a quick smile, out of her cap. "Why--I'd--I'd--I declare I don't know just what you could _do_ for her! She's got so much pluck, it 'most seems as if you couldn't do much.... But I can kind of see her--" She was looking at it. "I can see that if she had, maybe a hundred dollars, say--of her own, unexpected like--when she left the hospital--I can just see the things she would do with it! There's four of the children and a kind of fiddling husband--_good_, you know-- But the way men are----"

"Yes, I know." His pencil was making absent notes. "What's his business?"

"She told me--he's a puddler. I don't know just what puddling is.... He works in a shop. You know, maybe, how they 'puddle'?"

"I've heard of puddling, yes."

"It's a respectable business, I guess. It sounds something the way he looks."

"The way he looks!"

She nodded. "'Puddler' makes me feel the way he does. It's a kind o' queer word."

He glanced at his paper. "Is there anything else you happen to think of for me to do?" The tone was dry, but a little amused.

"Well, there's folks--plenty of folks. You don't have to be in a hospital very long before you begin to know about folks--and begin to wish you was made of money."

"It's a good place for me, then.... I may get cured all through!" He laughed a little harshly.

"I hope you will," said Aunt Jane. She was looking at him with a deep, big kindness that suddenly broke through the little crust of cynicism in his face. He leaned forward and held out his hand.

"Thank you," he said.

XXI

"I wonder what I'd better do with these." She looked at the flowers in the box in her lap. "They're about the prettiest ones she's sent you--forget-me-nots." She lifted a handful of the blossoms and held them out.

He regarded them cynically. "I'm not likely to forget!" he said.

She looked at him over the flowers and smiled. "_She_ doesn't seem to forget either.... I guess she thinks a good deal of you," she added quaintly.