XVII INTERLUDE O, THE fun, the fun and frolic Tickled with artistic fingers! Kate the scrubber (forty summers, Stumps are shaking, crutch-supported; Splinted fingers tap the rhythm; And a head all helmed with plasters Wags a measured approbation. Of their mattress-life oblivious, All the patients, brisk and cheerful, Dim the gas-lights in the output There are, maybe, some suspicions New Year comes but once a twelvemonth XVIII CHILDREN: PRIVATE WARD HERE in this dim, dull, double-bedded room, I play the father to a brace of boys, Ailing but apt for every sort of noise, Bedfast but brilliant yet with health and bloom. They eat, and laugh, and sing, and fight, all day; All night they sleep like dormice. See them play At Operations :-Roden, the Professor, Saws, lectures, takes the artery up, and ties; Willie, self-chloroformed, with half-shut eyes, Holding the limb and moaning-Case and Dresser. XIX SCRUBBER SHE's tall and gaunt, and in her hard, sad face XX VISITOR HER little face is like a walnut shell With wrinkling lines; her soft, white hair adorns Her withered brows in quaint, straight curls, like horns; And all about her clings an old, sweet smell. Prim is her gown and quakerlike her shawl. Well might her bonnets have been born on her. Can you conceive a Fairy Godmother The subject of a strong religious call? In snow or shine, from bed to bed she runs, |