AS soon as Mr. and Mrs. Fairfax returned Sister Julia went back to her work at the great hospital. Mrs. Fairfax begged her to stay through the holidays, and the children coaxed¹ and coaxed, but to no avail, for she knew that “little lame² Madeline,” as every one called her, was longing³ for her to come. Madeline had been in the hospital once before, and for almost a year, but now she had come back to stay. The doctors said she would never be able to leave it again, nor would she be there very long. The best of care and kindest of nursing must soon fail to cage the little spirit in any house that human hands had made.
 
“I can understand how you feel that you must go,” Mrs. Fairfax had said to Sister Julia at the close of a long talk they had been having about it; “but it does seem too bad that you should take up your hospital work again without having had a vacation.”
 
“Vacation!” laughed Sister Julia. “Why, I have just come home from the happiest vacation of my life!”
 
“But you were at work all the time caring for Reginald, teaching the children, and, hardest of all, tending those poor wrecked⁴ sailors.''
 
“Yes, but it was all a pleasure. Every day I was breathing that strong salt air, and taking long strolls on the beach. To have chosen your life work, and to feel yourself hour by hour gaining strength and health that enables you to keep cheerily and steadily⁵ at it, why, there is no happiness for me, Mrs. Fairfax, that at all compares with that; and while that state of things continues, no idle vacation, if you please. I should be half miserable⁶ all the time.”
 
Mrs. Fairfax knew that Sister Julia was right in the matter, and bade her good-bye and God-speed with tears in her eyes, but they were tears of loving appreciation⁷, and not because she did not expect to see Sister Julia soon again. Indeed, it had been arranged that she should come down from the hospital the very next Sunday, and go with the children to the afternoon service at Mr. Vale's church.
 
Sunday came—a clear, cold Sunday, and little Nan woke and gave a sigh as she looked about the little room that had been hers for a week. It was a beautiful room. She was lying in the shiniest of little brass⁸ bedsteads, and there were lovely pictures on the walls, and pretty things of one sort or another on every side.
 
“Dear me!” she thought, a little regretfully; “only one more night, and we must go home,” but at the same time that one word home sent a glad little thrill through her heart. She felt sure that, after all, she would not exchange her own little room, with its wide-reaching view skyward, and landward, and seaward, for the finest room in the city, overlooking only a narrow street, and dreary⁹ stone walls and pavements; besides, though everyone had been so kind, and she loved them all dearly, it would be nice to curl up in her own mother's arms again, for even an eight-year-old little woman sometimes clings tenderly to certain comforts and luxuries of babyhood.
 
Sister Julia came at a quarter of four, and found the children eagerly waiting for her. As they walked down Fifth Avenue people looked with considerable interest at the sweet-faced woman, whose dress betrayed her a member of a sisterhood, and at the three children, who kept up a constant exchange of the place of honour, which consisted in being close to Sister Julia, on one side or the other, where they could have the privilege of clasping whichever hand was in best condition to forego the comfort of her muff.
 
There was nothing connected with this visit to which Nan and Harry¹⁰ had looked forward with more pleasure than to seeing Mr. Vale's church, and hearing him preach; and with beaming faces they followed Rex to the pew which they were to have quite to themselves, for Mr. and Mrs. Fairfax had gone to spend the afternoon with Grandma Fairfax, in Brooklyn.
 
“I think the church is beautiful,” whispered Nan to Sister Julia.
 
“I knew you would like it,” Sister Julia whispered back.
 
“The stained-glass windows are lovely, with the light coming through them.”
 
“Yes,” answered Sister Julia, for she did not fancy prolonged conversations in church.
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