She hoped she would always have willing hands.

She looked very pale at breakfast the next morning, and rather
older. Also she had a new note of authority in her voice when she
telephoned the kitchen and demanded H ward's soft-boiled eggs. She
washed window-sills that morning again, but no longer was there
rebellion in her soul. She was seeing suddenly how the hospital
required all these menial services, which were not menial at all but
only preparation; that there were little tasks and big ones, and one
graduated from the one to the other.

She took some flowers from the ward bouquet and put them beside
Johnny's bed--Johnny, who was still lying quiet, with closed eyes.

The Senior Surgical Interne did a dressing in the ward that morning.
He had been in to see Augustus Baird, and he felt uneasy. He vented
it on Tony, the Italian, with a stiletto thrust in his neck, by
jerking at the adhesive. Tony wailed, and Jane Brown, who was the
"dirty" nurse--which does not mean what it appears to mean, but is
the person who receives the soiled dressings--Jane Brown gritted her
teeth.

"Keep quiet," said the S.S.I., who was a good fellow, but had never
been stabbed in the neck for running away with somebody else's wife.

"Eet hurt," said Tony. "Ow."

Jane Brown turned very pink.