AUNT JANE
AUNT JANE
BY
JENNETTE LEE
AUTHOR OF "UNCLE WILLIAM,"
"THE WOMAN IN THE ALCOVE," ETC.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1915
Copyright, 1915, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
TO
GERALD STANLEY LEE
CONTENTS
"Aunt Jane, what are you thinking of?" The young man turned his head a little on the pillow to look inquiringly toward the door.
It was the door of Room 24 leading into the Men's Ward. Aunt Jane had been standing there for five minutes, gazing intently before her into space. The serene face framed in the white muslin cap had a rapt, waiting look. It reminded the young man of a German madonna that he had run across last summer in an old gallery corner, whose face had haunted him. "Aunt Jane, what are you thinking about?" he repeated gently.
She turned slowly toward him, the placid look breaking into twinkles. "I was thinking I'd better turn Mr. Ketchell's mattress the other end to, and put a bolster under the upper end. It kind of sags."
For a moment the young man on the pillow looked a little bewildered. Then he lay back and laughed till the iron bedstead rang and the men in the ward pricked up their ears and smiled in sympathy.
Aunt Jane smiled too, stepping leisurely toward him.
"There, there," she said as she adjusted the sheet and lowered his pillow a trifle: "I don't know as I'd laugh any more about that. 'Tisn't so very funny to change a mattress the other end to."
He raised a hand and wiped the laughter from either eye. "But you looked as if you were thinking of angels and cherubim and things, Aunt Jane."
She nodded placidly. "I generally do," she responded, "but that doesn't hinder knowing about mattresses and bolsters.... I wouldn't laugh any more for a day or two if I was you. The bandages might get loose." She slipped a careless hand along his forehead, gathered up a cup and plate from the stand beside him, and slid plumply from the room.
His eyes followed her through the door, down the long ward as she stopped here and there for a word or a question. Once she raised her hand sternly at a bed and sniffed. The cap strings bristled fiercely.
"He's catching it," muttered the young man from the private room. "I knew he would. You can't keep a baccy-pouch in the same room with Aunt Jane." He sighed a little and glanced, without turning his head, toward the window where the spring clouds sailed and filled with swelling whiteness. A breath of freshness stole in softly. On the sill was a bowl of pansies. He lay looking at them idly. His lids fluttered and closed—and lifted again and fell shut.
Out in the ward the men were laughing and talking. Sanderson, robbed of his baccy-pouch, was sullen and resentful and the men were chaffing him. Aunt Jane drifted through the swing-door at the end of the ward. She placed the cup and plate on a dumb-waiter and crossed the hall to the Women's Ward. A nurse met her as she came in the door. "Mrs. Crosby is worse. Temperature a hundred and four," she said in a low voice.
Aunt Jane nodded. She went slowly down the ward. White faces on the pillows greeted her and followed her. Aunt Jane beamed on them. She stopped beside a young girl and bent over to speak to her. The girl's face lighted. It lost its fretted look. Aunt Jane had told her that she was to have a chop for her dinner if she was a good girl, and that there was a robin out in the apple-tree. She turned her gaunt eyes toward the window. Her face listened. Aunt Jane went on.... A nurse coming in handed her a slip of paper. She glanced at it and tucked it into her dress. It was a telephone message from Dr. Carmon, asking to have the operating-room ready for an appendicitis case in ten minutes.
The girl with the gaunt eyes called to her:
"Aunt Jane!" The voice was weak and impatient.
Aunt Jane turned slowly back. She stood by the bed, looking down with a smile.
The girl thrust an impatient hand under her cheek: "Can I hear him in here?" she demanded.
