Friends for Life.

BY MRS. MASSEY,

Author of Mrs. Harker's Christmas,' The Inner Life, &c. &c.

CHAPTER I.

A BUNCH OF SNOWDROPS.

T was only a piece of orange-peel. Mistress had sent me to the baker's to fetch home the dinner; and I must have set my foot on the peel as I ran round the corner, for I slipped and fell on the pavement.

I remember the sharp, sudden pain, and the look, too, of the faces that gathered round me in a moment; a chimney-sweep, a boy with a basket, some children, and two or three women, and then I heard a policeman's voice, as he pushed one of the women aside and told me to get up. I suppose I must have tried, and then fainted with the pain; for I didn't know anything more until, a long time after, I opened my eyes and saw opposite to me a row of narrow beds with blue coverlets, and on each pillow a white, suffering face.

My own bed in which I was lying was just like the rest; and as I looked down the iong, white walls, and noticed two or three nurses softly moving about, I knew that I was in a hospital ward.

I didn't trouble much about it, except for the pain. I thought that if I had hurt myself it was quite right and natural that they should put me in a hospital; and when I got better I should look for a place again and rub on somehow, as I had done before. The hospital was better any way than the workhouse in which I had been brought up, and I never thought either of fretting about it or of being grateful.

But the pain in my foot was hard to bear. I had pushed the bone somehow out of its place; and for the first two days I couldn't turn my mind much to anything but that; for the doctors pulled it about, and the nurses rubbed it and hurt me worse than ever, though I knew they were doing their best and quickest to make it well.

Everyone was very kind and gentle to me; and the second day the chaplain came to me, after he had read prayers in the ward, and asked me my name, and where I lived, and spoke kindly to me; but I didn't take much account of his words. He talked just as the clergyman at the workhouse used to do, and I had never given my mind to think about it.

But when I had been three days in the hospital, the pain began to get less, and I found myself looking about here and there, and taking notice of the prints on the walls and of the pattern of the nurse's white cap.

My bed was at the far end of the ward, nearest to the wall; and the one opposite to mine was generally empty in the day-time, for the little girl with a broken arm, who slept there, was getting well, and sat by the fire at the furthest end of the room, almost all day. Next to her, was a very deaf old woman, who had something the matter with her head. I knew she must be deaf, because the nurse always came quite close and put her mouth down to the pillow before she spoke to her.

As I lay there watching, the short February afternoon began to close in : it had been a dull, wet day, but now a long, bright line of yellow light shone in through one of the high windows. It was so pretty, that I turned to watch it as it moved slowly along the white wall, and thus for the first time I noticed the face of my neighbour in the next bed. She wasn't looking at me. I think she must have been watching the sunshine too, for her face seemed glad, as if something was shining through it. I could see her quite well as she lay, and I thought then, and think now, that I never saw any other face so pleasant to look at. I don't know whether folks would have called her pretty, she was too white and thin, perhaps, for that; but her beautiful, soft eyes were shining just as if there was a light within them, and they seemed to me to make the whole of her face bright. I wondered how she came to be in a hospital, for, to my thinking, she looked like a lady.

I was glad the girl's face was turned away, for

I wanted to look at her, and she never to know; and then, by-and-by, I shut my eyes and began to make a story for myself, and fancy what it would be like if I were only as white and delicate as this girl, and as like a lady.

I always liked making stories for myself. I never had any other pleasure, except indeed for one half-year in my life. I was picked up in the street when I was a baby,-picked up where someone had left me wrapt in a bit of old shawl (so I heard tell at the workhouse),—and of course I never had any friends, or anyone to care about me.

I was never one for getting on well with the other children. They all called me selfish and sulky; and so I was. I liked to get into any corner, out of the way, and make up dreams for myself of being rich, and pretty, and well learned, and of having plenty of people to love me; and I never thought of loving the folks round me, or of being any use to them.

There was one half-year, though, when everything seemed different. A new governess came to the workhouse-school. We all laughed at her finely at first, for she was small, and her back not quite straight; but it wasn't long before I got to love her so much that I don't know what I should have done to any girl who had made fun of her. Being one of the oldest then, and determined enough when I took anything into my head, I managed to make the others do pretty much as I liked; and soon I had nothing more to do, for they all began to grow so fond of Miss Martin, that my only trouble was that I could never get her all to myself. I used to think that if she had stayed, I might have been good. She seemed to help and understand me as no one else ever did; and when, in one of my sulky, miserable fits, I used to see her kind eyes looking at me so sorry, I never could hold out.

But she didn't stay six months at the house. She began to get very ill, and her voice grew so weak that she couldn't teach us any longer. The evening before she went away, she sent for me into the matron's room, and there was no

one there but us two. I had often and often thought that if I were only quite alone with her, I could tell her how I loved her, and how I would like to be good and please her; but now it was really come, I felt too shy to say a word. She gave me good advice, and told me not to forget her, for she was going into the country to get strong, and perhaps some day she would come back and see me.

But only a few weeks after she went away, there came a little parcel by post for me. I had never had anything by the post before, and I felt quite frightened all the time while the matron was undoing it. Inside the parcel was Miss Martin's little Prayer-book that she always used. She was dead, and had left this little book to be sent to me with her love, and she hoped I should always mind and say my collect.

I was thinking all this over as I lay in the hospital ward that February afternoon; for somehow I did not get on well with the story I had begun about myself; and then I began to wonder, could it be that this girl in the next bed was at all like Miss Martin, else why had the sight of her made me think of my dear governess, and begin to wish I had sent word to mistress to please put my Prayer-book along with the linen I had sent for?

The next day-Wednesday it was a lady came to see some of the patients in the ward. She came every Wednesday, they told me ; but of course I had not seen her before. She brought some books with her, and she sat down by several of the beds and talked, but in such a soft, low voice, that we others did not hear at all what she said. She had been in the ward about an hour, and was just going away, when the nurse said something to her, and the lady looked up to our end of the ward. 'She's coming to speak to my neighbour,' I thought: 'what a pity she's asleep!' But the lady passed softly by that bed, just looking at the fast-closed eyes, and then she came and sat down by me.

She asked me whether I should like her to bring me a book, when she came next time, and I told her 'Yes, if it was a pretty one.'

'What do you call a pretty one?' she said.

'Stories, with plenty of pictures, ma'am,' I answered.

She smiled at that, and said she would try to find me one.

'But I must give you some flowers instead of a book to-day,' the lady went on; and she took a little bunch of snowdrops out of her dress and put them on my bed.

'Do you like flowers?' she asked.

'I don't know, ma'am,' I said; for, having lived all my life in London, I had never given much thought to them, and I was feeling disappointed not to have a book. However, the lady wasn't angry, for she left the snowdrops lying on my bed, and when she was gone, I took them up and played with them, and began to think they were really very pretty. They seemed to me to be something like the girl in the next bed; and then, when that fancy came into my mind, I began to wish I could give the flowers to her; she looked as if she would care for such things, I thought. She was still asleep when nurse passed by my bed.

'Nurse,' I said, quite soft, and she came up to

me.

'Is the pain bad again? she asked.

'It isn't the pain,' I told her, but would you kindly put this posy on her bed?' and I pointed to the one next mine.

'Well, now, that I call kind, for she'll be finely put about to have missed the lady's visit,' said nurse, as she took the flowers and put them down just where the girl could see them when she opened her eyes. I put the sheet across my face so that I could watch her and she never see me; but it was five o'clock before she woke. Then I saw her wonder at the white buds, and she put out her fingers to touch them, and stroked them as if she liked the feel, smiling so that I liked her face better than ever.

It wasn't long before nurse came up. 'Let me put your pretty flowers in water, my dear,' she said. 'This little girl here, she sent them to you; the lady gave them to her.' (I

was on my seventeen, but being small, nurse called me a little girl.)

'Was it really you?' asked my neighbour. She was speaking to me, and I pulled the sheet more than ever over my face, and said, 'Yes, through it, as gruff as I could, and then I pretended to be fast asleep ; so she couldn't say any more; only I heard her whisper softly, 'Thank you; it was very good of you.'

CHAPTER II.

SAYING THE COLLECT.

BUT next morning when I woke I found those soft eyes looking full at me. I was going to pull the sheet up again, but my neighbour said 'Good morning' so pleasantly that I was obliged to answer back again, but I wouldn't get into talk. I didn't like that she should look at me and see how plain, and coarse, and poor, I was beside her, and I turned my face away from her to the wall. Somehow I soon found myself thinking again about Miss Martin, just as I had done yesterday, and wishing I had always said my prayers and learnt the Collect, as she bid

me.

We had always been made to learn and repeat it at school; and I thought I would try, as I had no book, to remember what was the Collect for the Second Sunday in Lent, for I hadn't taken any heed when the clergyman read it. But perhaps having heard it so lately made it easier to call the words to mind, for, after a little while, I got hold of the beginning, and said it over softly to myself.

;

'Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves, keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body and there my memory quite failed me, for not a word more could I call back, with all my trying. At last, what with the words going on saying themselves in my head and beginning to get turned about and to ring changes like a peal of bells, I felt quite puzzled and tired, and as if I

would give anything just to hear the Collect once straight through, and then put it out of my mind. 'I daresay that girl has a prayer-book,' I thought; 'I might ask her to let me look at it ;' but somehow I was shy of doing it, so I lay still, and the words went buzzing through my head all the long morning. It seemed very strange when, that afternoon, I heard my neighbour say to the nurse, 'Would you be so good as to let me have the large Prayer-book on my bed? my eyes feel too weak for the little one today;' and then the nurse got the large book that the clergyman used, and put it on her bed.

I felt I must ask her now; and I managed to say, 'Please I want to know how the Collect goes on after "all adversities that may happen to the body;" I can't call it up, and it teases me.' 'I had better read it all through to you,' she said quietly, and she began and went on to the end.

Now I had once spoken it didn't seem so difficult to go on, and it was a good time too, for there was no one at our end of the ward just then, except the deaf old woman. So, after I had thought a little, I said what had been in my mind a good deal that morning.

'You never prayed that prayer, did you?' I asked.

Surely I have, many a time,' she answered me, as if surprised.

'I thought if you had, maybe you wouldn't have been here,' I said. 'It came into my mind that if I had said my prayers and the Collect, I shouldn't have slipped on the piece of orangepeel and hurt my foot.'

'I see what you are thinking about,' and she smiled. Isn't it something like this: that when the horse kicked and hurt me, that was an adversity to the body, and that if I had asked God to defend me from such He would never have let it happen??

'That's something about it,' I answered.

'But there's this to think of,' the girl said very softly; was it really an adversity after all?'

'You didn't want to get hurt and come in here, did you?' I cried.

'No, I didn't;' and she smiled rather sadly as she said this; 'but it may turn out to be a good thing, after all, you know.'

'I don't see how it can,' I was beginning to say, but just then nurse came round with the tea, and told my neighbour that she had better not talk any more.

'Then good night, dear,' she said to me. I should like to give you something as pretty as these flowers; they are such a treat to me.'

I didn't answer, but in my heart I knew right well that she had given me something that I cared for more than all the flowers in Covent Garden, for no one before had ever called me 'dear' like that. Once or twice Miss Martin had said 'my dear,' but from this girl it sounded somehow as if we were equal friends; and as I went to sleep that night I even forgot to puzzle over what she meant about adversities, for I was saying to myself 'Good night, dear,' just as she said it, and hugging up the word close into my heart.

Next morning I woke with the feeling of having something pleasant to look forward to. Generally the first thing I had to think of was the time, and whether I could take another five minutes in bed, for I was mostly late at night and very tired, there being so many in the family and me the only servant. Now that the pain was better I liked to feel that I need not get up, but, better still, to think about the girl in the next bed, and to wonder whether we should have any more talk together.

Friday was visitors' day; and long before three o'clock everybody in the ward seemed to be looking forward and getting ready; only I didn't trouble, for there was no vuc to come to me. Unless, indeed, mistress sent Miss Lizzie, but I didn't think that was likely, for I knew she would be busy enough now I was away. Master kept a glass and crockery shop, and mistress was often called down in the middle of the day to help wait on the customers. Well, if no one came to me I must watch the others; that would be some change at least, and I wondered who would come to see my neighbour. Plenty