"Here is a chair. I will be back presently."
Gregory sat down, with bent head and quick breath. She did not speak, and
lay with half-closed eyes, seeming to have forgotten him.
"Will you turn the lamp down a little?" she said at last; "I cannot bear
the light."
Then his heart grew braver in the shadow, and he spoke. Nursing was to
him, he said, his chosen life's work. He wanted no money if-- She stopped
him.
"I take no service for which I do not pay," she said. "What I gave to my
last nurse I will give to you; if you do not like it you may go."
And Gregory muttered humbly, he would take it.
Afterward she tried to turn herself. He lifted her! Ah! a shrunken little
body, he could feel its weakness as he touched it. His hands were to him
glorified for what they had done.
"Thank you! that is so nice. Other people hurt me when they touch me," she
said. "Thank you!" Then after a little while she repeated humbly, "Thank
you; they hurt me so."
Gregory sat down trembling. His little ewe-lamb, could they hurt her?
The doctor said of Gregory four days after, "She is the most experienced
nurse I ever came in contact with."
Gregory, standing in the passage, heard it and laughed in his heart. What
need had he of experience? Experience teaches us in a millennium what
passion teaches us in an hour.
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